Avantika Talks Early 2000s Music and Meeting Her Best Friend On Netflix’s Senior Year
Rebel Wilson is taking us back to high school in Netflix’s Senior Year. The film follows a high school cheer captain who falls during a stunt and lands in a coma. Twenty years later, she awakens, ready to reclaim her prom queen status. I spoke with Avantika about joining the hilarious cast of Senior Year, the early 2000s bops that soundtrack the film, and meeting her best friend on set.
Fresh off the debut of her Disney Channel Original Movie Spin, Avantika is headed in a new direction with Senior Year. She plays Janet Singh, a slightly introverted and highly ambitious student, who becomes friends with Rebel Wilson’s Stephanie Conway when she returns to high school. “At first glance, she seems a little bit uptight, but I think she's one of the most open people I've met. She’s always willing to hear somebody out and always willing to help somebody. That's her good politician because she really wants to become president and she really wants to help lead,” Avantika told me. “This is a very mature adult comedy, so playing a character like Janet in that kind of of an environment was very interesting.”
This film put Avantika in a position to work with both comedy veterans and some of her favorite rising young actors. “First of all, Rebel Wilson is amazing. She's so much fun to act with and her improv’s great. Like the extent to which we see it in this film is not her in her full glory because there's so much more we just like couldn't put it in the movie because everything was so much material. I think working with her and Sam Richardson and Mary Holland and […] all these comedy veterans, they all take really big risks on set in terms of the lines their deliver and the improv they choose to do. That was one of my main takeaways. Even if you're on a set with such commendable actors, it's okay to take risks and it's okay to make a bold move,” she shared about the cast. “I met my best friend on that set. It's so amazing to work with young Hollywood and up-and-coming actors as well. I love Love, Victor so to work with Michael [Cimino], it was great to work with all of these people that I […] admire so much.”
That’s right, she even met her best friend working on Senior Year. “Oh my god, Joshua Colley, I think he’s literally texting me right now, but yeah he's amazing. Alex Hardcastle, our director, put us in touch. He was like, ‘I know you from Spin,’ and I was like, ‘Oh my god!’ I think our first text chain was just us complimenting each other because he has such a beautiful face and I was like, ‘You're so gorgeous,’ and he's like, ‘You're so talented,’” gushed Avantika. “Our relationship is so amazing. When he comes out to LA, he stays with me and we just have such a blast. Honestly it doesn't feel like we've known each other for just a year, but I'm so lucky. We both told the writer that we were so glad that he picked us for this film because we both met our best friends on this movie.”
The film also capitalizes on the nostalgia of the early 2000s with pop culture and music references, including a big moment around Britney Spears’ “Crazy” music video. “I grew up watching those kinds of movies [and] listening to Britney Spears, so to be a part of a movie that is a callback to that era and to recreate one of Britney’s most iconic songs was so much fun,” she told me. “It was such a dream.”
Avantika can do it all — sing, dance, act — but she’s ready to add a new skill to that list. “I have something very exciting coming up. I can't like necessarily divulge all the details, but I'm going to be producing and starring in something very big and that's very close to my heart. [It’s] something that i've been working on for a long time, but that announcement is coming up soon so I'm very excited,” Avantika shared. “Production is definitely something that's going to be new to me and developing and helping write something is going to be very new.”
While we impatiently wait for Avantika’s exciting new project to be announced, you can watch her break it down to “Crazy” in Senior Year, now streaming on Netflix.
