Mika Abdalla steps off campus and onto set for Vogue India’s September-October 2026 cover

David Lynch, one of cinema’s most experimental auteurs, had a peculiar audition process. Instead of a traditional cold read, he would interview the actor. Lynch famously cast Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive after a 35-minute interview based on a headshot taken by her brother. At 19, Mika Abdalla was under consideration for one such chat—a daunting prospect, at any age, but a story for one’s grandkids all the same. It felt providential as her career had been at a standstill. “It got me out of this trench of despair,” Abdalla recalls. “I felt like everything was lining up. I sent in a video; there was no script, I just spoke about myself. And then immediately after, Covid happened.” The project fell apart, and she never got to meet Lynch. “I was not doing well, mentally. But I had learnt to deal with rejection at a very early age. As an actor, you’re typically auditioning for two, three things a week. Eventually, you realise there’s no way you book even half of those. There are so many moving parts that 99 per cent of whether or not you get the role has nothing to do with you.”

That perspective was hard-earned. Abdalla first stepped into the industry at the age of six, modelling for a local parenting magazine in Dallas, her hometown. In 2008, she made her onscreen debut on Barney & Friends.

“I was quite anxious as a kid,” reveals the actor, now 26. We are talking over Zoom, and while I’m in Mumbai, looking ­ forward to a good night’s sleep, she’s sipping on her morning coffee in Vancouver, where the cast and crew of Off Campus are currently filming the second season. She’s dressed comfortably—grey hoodie, sweatpants, matching baseball cap. “I do wonder,” Abdalla continues, “whether that anxiety comes from being an only child. I was always hanging around adults, so I was aware of the world and the way that people are at such a young age. I never had any childlike wonder.” Between early morning call times and after-school shoots, the actor would wind down by riding horses at a barn down the road from her house. She lights up when she tells me how horses are incredibly intuitive and sense your fear, feel your joy and feed off your energy. “If you get nervous when you’re about to jump, the horse can get spooked,” Abdalla warns. “So it really helped me learn how to control my body’s response to stress.”

The same instincts kick in on set. Right before the director yells “Action”, the actor focuses on grounding herself. Abdalla reaches for another equestrian analogy. “If you freak out on a horse, your knees scrunch up and you start pointing your toes, trying to hold on, which freaks the horse out, so you need to remind yourself to put your heels down. Often, I think about sinking my heels into the floor, and focus on what my feet feel like before we start filming.” She still goes riding when she can; her manager owns a horse, and her aunt is a show-jumper turned trainer. “Are you a horse girl?” I ask, wondering whether I’m intruding, but she laughs. “Girl, leave me alone. Yes, I am.”

With season two of Off Campus set to wrap filming in September, it won’t be long before Abdalla can be on horseback in Dallas again. When season one released earlier this year, it became a roaring success for many reasons. One, a fiercely loyal viewership thanks to Elle Kennedy’s bestselling books. Two, emotionally articulate characters (a rarity in the college romance genre). Three, a cast with impeccable chemistry. And four, Allie Hayes’s haircut. I haven’t let my hair grow past my shoulders since I was 16, nor have I been tempted to, but watching Allie dance to Jennifer Lopez’s ‘On The Floor’, her hands running through her fluffed-up locks, was not good for my bob’s ego. Long, messy, with heavy layers and wispy bangs, few Pinterest moodboards have been spared the ‘Allie shag’. Abdalla clarifies that she has been sporting it for nearly a decade. “It’s just my haircut,” she insists. “I’ve had it since I moved to LA, and it was so sweet that Louisa [Levy] and Gina [Fattore] liked it enough to let me keep it. Although,” she adds, “it does not look the way it does on Allie, even 20 per cent of the time.”