Mean Girls breakout star Avantika is looking back on her career trajectory and opening up about the influence of Bridgerton stars Charithra Chandran and Simone Ashley in it.
In a new interview with Cosmopolitan, Avantika was asked about colorism within the Indian film industry and admitted that while it “is primarily one of the biggest reasons why” she’s “definitely always felt uglier in India” than in the U.S., seeing other actors with similar backgrounds, like Chandran and Ashley, achieving international success gave her the push to never settle for less.
“I’m South Indian, and there’s this perception that North Indian women are more beautiful than South Indian women,” Avantika explained. “And the South Indian women who do reach insane levels of success in India are very light-skinned—some have become lighter skinned. So seeing myself represented in Bridgerton season 2’s Charithra Chandran and Simone Ashley—beautiful, dusky skinned women—South Indian women— in Hollywood has made me so, so happy.”
“I have definitely found that the odds are a bit less stacked against me here [in the U.S.] than they are there [in India] because I can’t change my skin color,” she continued. “But I can convince people that I’m talented and that I deserve an opportunity or that I have a voice that needs to be heard.”
Before the world knew her as Karen in the new Mean Girls, Avantika was juggling careers both in the U.S. and India. “I grew up in Indian classical dance and competed in India’s version of So You Think You Can Dance, a massive dance reality show that filmed in Bombay. It was my first exposure to the film industry, and I fell in love with it,” she told Cosmo. “At the time, South Asian representation wasn’t as prevalent in the American film industry as it is now, and so my mom was like, ‘Well, if you want to be an actor, the best place with the most opportunities are in India where there’s no trope or box you’re backed into by being brown.’”
However, her career became stagnant in her late teens — “in the Indian film industry, there aren’t a lot of roles for actors between the ages of 14 to 19,” she explained — which forced her to move back to the U.S. where she landed Spin. “The movie got shelved and brought back two years later, but it really opened up this door in my head: Maybe there is a space for me in Hollywood. Maybe there is a space for me in this industry that I can carve out.”
Now that Mean Girls has fully catapulted her to the masses and she can call Charithra Chandran and Simone Ashley her peers, Avantika is set on keeping the baton rolling.
“In a room full of a hundred people, Hollywood is now offering spots to maybe three women of South Asian descent. So the fear of I’m going to leave, and I’m going to take a break, and somebody else is going to come, and the world’s just going to forget about you and not give you a chance or not give you a space in that room anymore is so imminent, and it’s so real,” she said. “You feel really shitty for feeling that way because, at the end of the day, the last thing you want to be doing is for someone to open the door for you, and as soon as you make your way into that room, you shut the door behind you. That’s not my vibe.”
To remedy that, the 19-year-old wants to start her own production company to uplift South Asian voices. “I’m hustling right now because I want to make moves in the industry that will help open up doors, so that the opportunities are so many and so plentiful that South Asian women of color don’t feel like they’re scrapping for things and fighting against each other.”
