When the Nickelodeon sitcom Victorious ended in 2013, Avan Jogia, who starred as the impossibly suave Beck Oliver, theoretically should've felt on top of the world. He was 21, a verifiable teen heartthrob, and poised to launch the next phase of his successful career — much like megawatt child stars who came before him. Instead, Jogia tells me one December afternoon over Zoom, he quickly felt "limited and suffocated" by the roles he was being offered. Unsatisfied with his career and done waiting for purpose to be thrust upon him, he got to writing.
“I didn't want to just be adrift,” Jogia says of that period. “I needed to be a participant in my own life. And part of that was grabbing the reins of my creativity and being able to create something that is fully and wholly mine.”
