'Victorious' Star Has Surprising New Venture

Victorious alum Avan Jogia has announced the launch of an unexpected new project. Jogia spoke with BuzzFeed News about his recently-launched personal essays and poetry email newsletter that went live in late March.

In a May 9 Zoom interview about his new Substack, Typing W/ Feeling, the actor said that the goal of his newsletter is to cultivate a "smaller, intimate community," and give people the thrill of hearing from him directly from their inbox. "It feels like a private conversation," Jogia told Buzzfeed News. "I was craving out of this internet thing a strong sense of community, and maybe a way for us to make stuff and watch people make stuff, sort of like what it's originally intended for." Typing W/ Feeling had just over 10,000 followers as of May.

According to Buzzfeed, Jogia often engages with his audience by replying with emojis and thank-yous in his newsletter comments. He considers the newsletter a representation of the "real him," which he called "telling the truth through lies."

The Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star said in the interview that he doesn't care if audiences find the project cringe-worthy. "Cringe is something measured by somebody else," he said. "When you've done stuff that people might consider cringe, there's sort of a freedom that comes on the other end of that, where you're just like, 'Oh, I don't care.'"

Jogia does not shy away from expressing his views in the newsletter, lashing out at grammar snobs as "pedantic" and "boring" in his first post, an opinion he said is partly the result of his dyslexia and ADHD. "If the way that I've spelled 'your' is taking away from the messaging, I think you're obsessed with aesthetics, and you're obsessed with the outer dermis of an idea," he noted.

The actor is perhaps best known for his role as Beck Oliver on the 2010 Nickelodeon series, Victorious. He portrayed a popular performing arts high school student with a will-they-won't-they relationship with the show's main character, Tori Vega, played by Victoria Justice. 

Jogia, 30, continues to interact with the show's fans on his TikTok, which has 3.9 million followers. However, he has expressed a desire for the "old internet" and deleted many past posts for not fitting his current mood. "I've been deleting posts, putting them back up and deleting," he said. "It's chaos."

Since the show, Jogia has released a book of poetry, appeared in Zombieland: Double Tap, and directed a feature film. He recently filmed the upcoming Netflix interactive rom-com Choose Love in New Zealand while continuing to write Substack updates."Probably 'actor' is the most realistic for what people are aware of me, but…who are any of us nowadays?" Jogia asked. "It's part of the story. It's not a full experience of a person."

In March, Jogia was announced to co-star in the action-crime film Johnny & Clyde with Ajani Russell. Called a "spin on the iconic Bonnie and Clyde story," Jogia and Russell play two serial killers in love and on a crime spree. Deadline reports that the movie will have a theatrical release later this year and be available in Redbox kiosks and on-demand.