‘Senior Year’s Avantika On Embracing Improv, Replicating Britney Spears Video & More
‘Senior Year’ star Avantika spoke EXCLUSIVELY with HL about her exciting (and very funny) role after her Disney breakout, tackling improv with Rebel Wilson, and more.
Avantika is a member of the stellar cast of Senior Year, out now on Netflix. The 17-year-old actress stars as Janet, one of the students who befriends Stephanie when she wakes up from a 20-year coma and finds herself in 2022. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Avantika about why this film stood out to her.
“I’m such a big fan of her [Rebel Wilson] and coming off of Disney I really wanted to do something that was a bit more mature, but something that’s still talked about nuanced topics,” Avantika said. “I think this movie does that really, really well. It’s an adult comedy. It’s definitely mature, but it just also talks about such important things like acceptance, especially in this day and age. I think it’s very, very important. It seemed like such a fun movie. I was such a big fan. I still am such a big fan of like the late 90s, early 2000s movies and chick flicks that even though I’m not set in that decade of the movie, it was still such a blast to be a part of a movie that had that juxtaposition.”
The film is chock-full of hilarious moments. Avantika revealed that improv was a major aspect of Rebel’s method on set. “I could not tell you how much fun it was. It was obviously very intimidating to be on a set with someone who’s renowned for being so good at improv and to do that with a director who loves improv and really just stresses the importance of improv in every scene,” she noted. “He was always like, ‘Make sure you add your own flavor.’ It was a little bit intimidating. But as soon as I was on set, everything melted away because Rebel and Alex Hardcastle, who’s our director, were both just so great at making people feel comfortable. I think in an environment like that you’re truly given the resources needed to shine and to go off on improv. I would say 60-70% of me and Josh Colley’s material in the movie is improv.”
One of Senior Year’s most iconic scenes is when the cast recreates Britney Spears’ “Crazy” music video. “We really did try hard to replicate it to the best of our abilities. Obviously, no one can live up to the Queen, but we really did try,” Avantika told HollywoodLife. “I grew up watching that song. I grew up listening to that song. We’re very big Britney fans in this household. It was such a big part of our house’s culture almost, so to be able to recreate that was insane, and to be given that opportunity to brainstorm the costumes that would kind of fit the hip hop vibe and to wear the pink waitress uniform was so much fun. To just watch a Rebel rock those outfits and really embody Britney and to learn that dance was truly a blast. It’s so much fun to learn. A lot of people didn’t really have dancing experience, but our choreographer was so amazing. He trained all of us so well and the choreography is so fun to do for anybody. Everybody killed it. It was just such a fun experience.”
The beginning of Senior Year takes place in 2002. Avantika wasn’t even born until 2004. The actress revealed what surprised her about the 2002 culture versus 2022.
“We still have a long way to go, but it definitely is a lot more progressive and we’re a lot more inclusive,” Avantika said about the present day. “It really just surprised me to see the 2000s period just be a lot different from that because all I know is that everybody’s welcome in school. I was bullied too but never for stuff like this, so to see such different things shown in the 2002 segment of the movie I think was really interesting. It’s something that I never really experienced because I didn’t go to school during that time period, but I think it was very cool to see.”