Avan Jogia is driving back to set for a night shoot after grabbing a few hours’ sleep during the afternoon, shoehorning an interview or two into his commute.
It’s the type of scenario his character in Rebecca Addelman’s Paper Year would have killed for. Jogia plays Dan, a would-be young actor who hasn’t booked anything in over two years, a fact that should prevent him from marrying his girlfriend Franny (Eve Hewson), but doesn’t.
The newlyweds are young, jobless and have no savings, much to the chagrin of Franny’s mom (Andie MacDowell). The next year offers plenty to test the bond between the couple, as Franny finds some degree of success as a writer on a cheesy game show (and temptation in the form of her boss, played by Hamish Linklater) and Dan reluctantly trades his Hollywood dreams in for more steady cash flow as a celebrity dog-sitter.
The married-too-young storyline hasn’t scared 26-year-old Jogia away from marriage… not quite. In real life he is happily ensconced in his home in Los Angeles with his partner of two years and a Yorkie-Poo named George. “I don’t think marriage is a negative, or a positive. As a device and a social construct to commemorate an event and a decision, it’s fine,” he muses. “But it might actually stop people from connecting more. Monikers and labels are powerful, you know?”
Jogia had no problems connecting to co-star Hewson (“Eve’s such a great actor, so giving… It was easy”) but says that he struggled a bit with Dan’s ordinariness: “I usually don’t play characters who don’t know who they are and who seem to be stuck in their rut,” he says. “He’s not special, and that’s hard for him. He’s a nice man, a regular guy. But he realizes he’s going nowhere.”
It’s no wonder the Vancouver-born actor can’t relate: he’s been going places since he quit school at 16 to train and focus on acting full-time. Then he headed south to L.A.
“My parents were supportive but they said ‘If you get a job in six months, great, you’re an actor. Otherwise you need to come back and do high school’.”
Jogia landed a TV movie right off the bat, then scored appearances in a string of series, TV movies and features. His big break, however, came when he was cast as Beck Oliver, a lead in the Nickelodeon series Victorious, which firmly cemented him in teen-heartthrob territory. There was no going back to high school.
He followed up with the lead role in the popular ABC Family series Twisted before tackling grown-up roles as James Franco’s lover in I Am Michael and as Tutankhamun in Tut, a mini-series also starring Ben Kingsley.
At the sage age of 17 Jogia co-founded the Straight But Not Narrow campaign, designed to raise awareness of LGBTQ rights, with Hunger Games star Josh Hutcherson. “There are amazing gay icons throughout history and recently with amazing things to say about what it takes to be supported, but when we first started it there was no group of straight people talking to other straight people about being good allies to the LGBTQ+ community... about how apathy is sickness,” he says. “It’s relevant now more than ever.”
One of Jogia’s more interesting projects was working with ‘90s youth culture film icon Gregg Araki on his short film for Kenzo’s autumn/winter 2015 fashion collection, which featured, among other things, a nun, a public make-out session, and a very sloppy hamburger. It was a collaboration that resulted in the actor’s current late-nights: he’s working with Araki once again, shooting his Now Apocalypse series (co-written by Vogue.com sex columnist Karley Sciortino and executive produced by Steven Soderbergh) for the Starz network. “I was very flattered to be asked. I really, really am passionate about his work.”
In between projects Jogia formed a band, Saint Ivory, with his brother (“No sense of being scared of failure… Music is a great way to tell stories”) and has written a collection of poetry, “Mixed Feelings” about being mixed race and trying to find your place in the world (Jogia’s father is Gujarati Indian, his mother is of English-Welsh descent).
Jogia sounds tired telling me all this, as he pulls onto set. Is it still fun, I ask? “Oh God, yeah, I love it!” he says, coming to life. “It’s an ever-evolving job for me. There’s always something to discover about the work.
“I wouldn’t want to do anything else,” he says, before clarifying, “I wouldn’t be good at anything else.”
