Before stardom, there’s ad spots. Leonardo DiCaprio sold Bubble Yum. Sarah Michelle Gellar told viewers all about Burger King. Keanu Reeves ate Corn Flakes. Avantika Vandanapu? At 10 years old, she was extolling the virtues of Fortune Sunflower Oil.
Eleven years later, the actor, now known mononymously as Avantika, has gone on to garner attention for far more demanding fare. She’s played the ever-popular Karen Shetty, Regina George’s “fetch” right-hand, in 2024’s adaptation of Mean Girls; a prima ballerina under Uma Thurman’s menacing gaze in Pretty Lethal; a celebrity stylist’s harried assistant in Mindy Kaling’s show Not Suitable For Work; and a new member of the ever-so-slightly cultish coven on American Horror Story’s 13th season—finale airing tonight.
Before she was a Hollywood upstart, however, the Bay Area native was the sunflower oil girl. “Indian people will know what ad I’m talking about,” she says with a laugh on the other end of our Zoom call, while telling me about the TV spot that still airs in India to this day. After cutting her teeth in the world of Indian dance reality, Avantika got her break in Tollywood, the sector of Indian cinema dedicated to Telugu-language films, at the age of 10. Her parents, both of Telugu origin, had decided to let Avantika move to India to try out being a child star because her mother feared she wouldn’t fit the Hollywood mold back in the U.S. “You just didn’t see a lot of people who looked like me,” the actor remembers. “My mother is a pragmatist at heart.”
After she aged out of the market she had cornered playing younger versions of female protagonists in Tollywood, Avantika returned to the U.S. with a game-changing role in hand: Disney had cast her as its first ever South Asian lead, for 2021’s Spin. That part, as a high-schooler who finds her passion behind the DJ decks, opened the doors to high-profile projects like the aforementioned Mean Girls and Pretty Lethal, in which she embodied wide-eyed young women. Now 21 and almost halfway through her senior year at Columbia University, she’s looking to expand her repertoire. “I’ve been very grateful to have played characters that are openly ‘pretty,’ but that’s not all I want to be.” Not Suitable For Work, before it was cancelled after its first season this summer, “was one of the first parts where I felt like my character wasn’t super singularly-described,” she continues, “and I felt really grateful to Mindy for giving me that opportunity to play someone who is independent and ambitious and driven.”
Ahead of the AHS finale, Avantika sat down to talk about the actor whose career arc she aspires to, her love for a horror franchise, and the politics of palatability.
I like that we both are still doing the wired headphones.
Always, always. My dad texted me maybe two months ago and was like, “You know, I gave you a lot of shit for not getting AirPods, but now I’m reading all this stuff about Bluetooth radiation, so I’m really glad you’ve been using wired.”
I haven’t even heard about the radiation.
It’s probably not true. The Facebook groups will never stop conspiring.
Is there a conspiracy theory that you do believe in?
Oh my goodness, I do believe in Area 51. Maybe not Area 51 as we know it, but it just feels very plausible. The CIA is always up to some nefarious stuff, so it doesn’t feel super far removed from plausible reality that they have secret grounds used for experimenting.
I’m kind of with you there. I feel like if you don’t believe in aliens in this day and age, you’re not paying attention.
They don’t need to be green humanoid creatures, but there’s definitely aliens.
Are you interested in doing a sci-fi type, Area 51 film?
I would love to. I mean, that’s the height of most actors’ dreams because we grow up playing pretend and aggressively world-building out of our bedrooms. Sci-fi, to me, feels like the peak of that. I grew up reading Dune and all these novels. Well, obviously not the 26 books that Frank Herbert’s son wrote after him, but the originals. That and romance movies are on my dream genre list for the next few years.
Did you grow up watching American Horror Story? How are you feeling joining the cast?
Horror is my favorite genre, so I, of course, was an avid American Horror Story fan. I didn’t grow up having cable, so a lot of the shows that I watched were a bit later to the times, but I grew up on shows like American Horror Story, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and long-form horror TV. It feels really surreal to be joining the cast, just because these are actors that I grew up watching: Angela Bassett, Sarah Paulson, Jessica Lange.
I know you grew up in the Bay Area, then went to India to act, and then came back to California. Could you tell me about that trip back and forth?
I grew up as a dancer in Indian dance reality, and I think the natural segue for someone who doesn’t want to be a creative director or a dance teacher, and doesn’t want to retire when they’re 35, is to segue into something else. I really loved theater, and at the time, my mom was very ready to champion any passions I had. Her one condition is always that you just have to be the best, which obviously is not in your control, but [there’s] the sentiment of trying your hardest and giving your all. There’s no half-assing extracurriculars in my family, for better or for worse. She was essentially like, “If you want to act, the American film industry is probably not the best place for you at the moment,” because you just didn’t see a lot of people who looked like me. She is a pragmatist at heart.
What was originally supposed to be a three-month-long summer trip of shooting this movie [in India] that I had booked through an audition from a Facebook group, ended up being a four-year-long saga of booking things back to back. [I acted there] until I was 14, and I couldn’t play the younger version of actresses anymore. I came back to California, and my mom gave me a year to really try my best. She was like, “If you fail to prove yourself in this year, you can be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, and do whatever you want after you get your degree.” But the year worked out pretty well.
I like that at 14, your mom says, “You’ve got a year to prove yourself. Buckle down.” Was your ambition to come back to the U.S. film industry, or were you so young that you were just rolling with the punches?
At the time I just wanted to go wherever there was work, and the inciting spark of moving to LA was that I had auditioned for what would end up being my first American movie, which was called Spin. It was a Disney Channel original movie that was looking for their first South Asian lead. At the time, there wasn’t a big enough pool of actors in America, so they reached out to an Indian casting director. Disney flew me out to LA and … I was like, Wait, maybe there is a chance for me here.
You’ve had a number of these breakthrough moments. You were on Disney Channel, which is where so many people got their start. You were in Mean Girls, you were in Mindy Kaling’s Not Suitable For Work. Now you’re on American Horror Story, which is always a big, buzzy project. Was there a moment for you where you felt like you’d first hit on something, and gotten the ball rolling?
The way that I grew up, you never sit and get to give yourself the gratification of like, I’ve climbed a few hills, and I’m on my way to climbing the mountain, and I’m doing pretty okay. There are of course moments where I sit and look around myself, and I’m like, Wow, I would have killed to be in a room like this when I was younger. That means the ball must be rolling. I can recognize that, but also sometimes the fear of feeling too content and becoming complacent and stagnant also lingers.
Not taking a pause to sit and recognize the things that have come, do you find that motivating, to always feel like it’s onto the next thing, or are you trying to take more moments to appreciate it all?
I like when things are happening all the time. I sort of am of the belief [that] I’ll sleep when I’m dead. But I also think that we live in a culture that places so much emphasis on hustling that I’m really conscientious of making sure there are times when I can just sit and enjoy. For example, if I’m traveling to a country on a job, or for a brand, or whatever, I like to account for a few days to really see the place and spend time with my friends there. I do think I could probably do a better job of relaxing and mentally being like, There isn’t this gun to my head all the time. We all feel the pressure of trying to climb the ladder the fastest we can, and unfortunately, I don’t think that always makes for good art or thoughtful art.
Has there been a project so far where you’re on set thinking, This is exactly the kind of project I want to do more of?
I really loved doing Pretty Lethal with Maddie Ziegler and Uma Thurman. That filmed in Budapest. It challenged me physically, and I would love to be in that space more. I also really loved doing Not Suitable for Work, just because it felt like I was part of something bigger, not just in an ensemble, but also that it was representative of twentysomethings in New York.
Did the show ending come as a surprise?
Maybe a little bit of a surprise for sure. I know so many people who did connect to the show. When I go to hot yoga, I get recognized for that show the most—because it’s so the 7 a.m. hot yoga class in Manhattan that those Murray Hill corporate bodies are attending. I understand why it happened, but I also do think that comedies in general take a second for you to sit with these characters and grow attachments to them, to find their pockets and find their beats.
Is there someone whose career you would like to follow?
I think everyone in my life knows that I really admire Emma Stone’s career, and I would love to have something like that because it’s really amazing that she went from doing these mass-appeal films that still felt like they had charm and were grounded—Easy A; Crazy, Stupid, Love; La La Land—then she went into period pieces, and then went into an indie area and had an amazing show like The Curse come out. I would love to do a Crazy, Stupid, Love.
You are chasing an oddball role a little bit?
Yeah, but I like that she took a more traditional route before she went into the indie. I think we are in a place in the industry where, because we’re competing against regurgitated media and AI, everyone else who really loves art feels the need to chase highbrow content, and in that attempt has maybe erred in taking themselves too seriously. I would love to be a part of good cinema for mass audiences that still feels real and funny and charming.
Part of being a woman of color is also humanizing us beyond a singular adjective, and in the last few years I’ve sort of been cast as… It’s really champagne problems and I’m grateful that we’ve broken out of the box of “taxi driver” or “doctor” or whatever, and I’ve been very grateful to have played characters that are openly “pretty,” but that’s not all I want to be. If you can condense these characters into a singular adjective, perhaps the battle is not fully complete. I would love to play characters that are more whimsical and quirky, like she has.
You’ve gotten these roles where it’s unexpected that we cast this person to play this role. What are you looking for people to offer you the opportunity to do that’s outside of, “We’re gonna redo this character in a new way”?
I’m open to any genre and I guess what I’m asking is that casting a Brown lead or a Brown character in the ensemble isn’t the most notable thing about the story. A lot of times, if the story is really interesting or really genre-bending, I feel like directors and studio execs perhaps might be like, “Okay, to stabilize, cast someone you would predict for the lead role. Someone who’s a little bit more palatable.” And when it is a more routine, normal story, the most notable thing, the most exciting thing about the project, is that they’re casting a Brown lead.
I love horror, and I love big horror franchises too. It is sort of surprising that in a franchise like The Conjuring or Evil Dead, we rarely see POC leads. I also grew up watching the classics. Even something like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, If it were to get made today, I really don’t know if they would cast a woman of color in a role like that. I just think it’s really hard for studios or production companies or directors to picture women of color outside of a singular adjective. The thing about Kate [Winslet]’s part in that movie is: you can’t condense it to a singular adjective. She’s so expansive.
I would love to know the best reaction you’ve gotten so far from your family or friends to seeing you onscreen.
I think all my best friends have asked me to sing “Sexy” at their wedding, which has been really awesome and a really big honor. Thank you, Tina Fey, for truly the opportunity of a lifetime. I got to play a character that nobody would have expected me to.
It’s an interesting choice for a wedding song, certainly.
I think everyone would want to join in. That is the pitch.
Do you remember the first time someone stopped you and said, “I’ve seen your work”? What was that experience like?
I was probably a little kid in India. I have a really notorious ad for a sunflower seed oil, and it did much better than people expected. They still run it, almost 10 years later. It was such a nothing thing in me and my mom’s head when we did it.
Do you feel like you’re destined to always be the sunflower seed girl, if they’re still running the ad?
Girl, I’m waiting for those royalties. [Laughs] I’m just grateful that I was able to be part of something so timeless. It might sound really trite to most people, but it was really awesome to have been a part of something that is still culturally relevant in India, 10 years later.
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