Avan Jogia shifts from kids’ roles to world-building

After nearly two decades in entertainment, Avan Jogia says he’s done feeling like he was “spit out” by the kids’ TV pipeline. He’s now leaning into world-building and steering his own path—through starring in Prime Video’s 56 Days, the release of Backrooms on

When Avan Jogia looks back on his start, he doesn’t describe it like a career ladder. He describes it like machinery.

He got his break on Nickelodeon’s Victorious. then moved into teen television with the ABC Family (now Freeform) show Twisted. But the actor. now 34. says the experience of being pulled into kids’ programming came with a kind of burden—what he calls being a “de facto ambassador and co-parent for every single person of an entire generation or two.” Then. when the show era ended. the pipeline spit him out in his late teens and early ’20s.

That moment didn’t just change his resume. It changed what he wanted to be in the years that followed. Jogia says he eventually realized he had “full control” to navigate where “this ship” goes—choosing roles and directing films that fit what he’s trying to make. not what the industry decided was available for him.

His latest turn is Backrooms, a project he worked on with director Kane Parsons that released Friday. And though audiences won’t technically see him on camera in the film, Jogia says he was drawn in by how Parsons builds worlds.

“I’ve liked him since he was 16 years old making his videos,” Jogia says of Parsons. He describes their collaboration as unusually long—“We kept on talking. ” he says—more than what a part like this normally would require. Jogia portrays Parsons as a “world builder” with “lore. ” “myth. ” and “depth for every aspect of it.” In his telling. that’s exactly the kind of filmmaking he wanted to step into once he got out of kids’ television.

There was more than admiration involved. Jogia says Parsons told him, “You’re in it. I don’t know in what capacity,” after he told his agents and managers: “Whatever the capacity is, I’m a gamer. I want to play ball.”

That idea—bigger worlds, characters with room to move—runs through the projects Jogia is choosing right now. He also says his work has been shaped by a personal shift: after 20 years of making things, he feels he’s arriving at “what my boundaries are.”

“It takes a long time, not just time elapsed, but inside yourself,” he says. “Maybe I do deserve to decide how I want to make and what I want to make.”

That shift has played out across the kinds of stories he’s taken on. Jogia says he wrote and directed a film that he also wrote when he was 23—writing from frustration that he didn’t like the parts available to him. and building the kind of roles he wanted to do. He’s described these as “frenetic, energetic movies” where characters can exist beyond “the very narrow window of human expression.”.

Even his transition from acting into directing. he says. wasn’t sudden—it was a decision that became clear after Twisted ended. He frames it as choosing navigation. not just riding forward: he loves acting and plans to keep doing it. but he says the journey of life opened room to alter his choices instead of accepting the first version of truth he learned.

The bridge between then and now includes 56 Days. the Prime Video romantic psychological thriller that caught his attention and also brought him back into a lead role—this time with “meat on the bones. ” he says. Jogia stars opposite Dove Cameron earlier this year. He says the role appealed because it lets him perform sweetness while also carrying the weight of what Oliver is dealing with. and he calls it a constant tension performance that can swing in different emotional directions.

He also remembers how physical the role was, saying he had his shirt off “all the time,” and describing the work as a “massive sigh” moment. But for him, the effort wasn’t the point—it was the chance.

When he talks about what happened after, his tone turns from ambition to gratitude. He calls it “a number one show situation” and says he’s “so humbled” by it. He adds that people have been “really, really nice,” and he says he doesn’t think anyone expects a show to become a cultural moment.

And yet he points to what it changed for him. Once you do a show like that, he says, opportunities multiply—and people may push you to keep going down the same road even if it pulls you away from what you truly want. His response, he says, was oppositional: “Let me go direct a movie.”

That brings the conversation to Replacer, the film he will be directing and co-writing with his fiancée, Halsey. He describes one of the joys of his life as collaborating with someone he calls immensely talented across mediums. He says their writing process is easy because they share a similar writing sensibility. He’s also focused on what he wants actors to do—explore something larger than the everyday. the mundane. the rote.

He says he wrote Replacer with the understanding that in her 20s Halsey was busy being “wildly successful” in a “very, very hard field,” and that she didn’t have time for movies like this. Jogia says he wanted to give her a chance: “You should have had one of these, so let me write it.”

Jogia doesn’t frame the relationship as a brand. He frames it as presence and possibility—seeing “all the different versions” of his partner, including the versions she might not have had time to step into.

Even when fans talk about what he could do next—he’s been fancasted to portray Xaden in the Fourth Wings Prime Video adaptation—he keeps the conversation tethered to what has always drawn him into acting: fantasy worlds, larger-than-life roles, and the communities that form around making.

He says he’d love to do fantasy. He remembers seeing The Lord of the Rings as a boy and thinking that one day he would want to be included in fantasy. He also says he’s played “every large-scale fantasy video game” and spent “tens of thousands of hours” living in fantasy worlds. When he talks about pirates. dragons. and a fantasy world like that. his excitement is direct—acting. as he puts it. is partly about making his younger self happy by playing in worlds that excited him.

If you asked him what makes Avan Jogia, Avan Jogia, he doesn’t name credentials. He says he’s passionate, curious, and loves creative collaboration.

He returns. again. to the idea of community—what he calls the pirate ship. the place where people go to “sail” and find what they’re trying to make. He says the day-to-day community on a set. where everyone believes in the same thing and works with “rolling up our sleeves. ” matters more to him than the outcome. The result is a byproduct.

Jogia closes by repeating that he sometimes loses his way, but that after 20 years of making stuff, he feels he’s arriving at what he’s allowed to decide. The kids’ television machine may have launched him, he implies, but the next chapter is one he insists on steering.

Backrooms released Friday. 56 Days has already landed as a Prime Video hit. And Replacer is next—directed, co-written, and shaped with Halsey—an answer to the moment he says he finally stopped waiting for permission to choose his own work.

Avan Jogia Backrooms 56 Days Prime Video Dove Cameron Kane Parsons Halsey Replacer directing world-building Twisted Victorious