Avan Jogia Speaks Out About His Experience as a Nickelodeon Star

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In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, the actor also reveals his experience as a teen celebrity

By Ilana Kaplan Published on February 13, 2025 12:10PM EST

Avan Jogia is opening up about working at Nickelodeon during his teen years.

From 2010 to 2013, the actor played Beck Oliver on the hit sitcom Victorious, which turned him into a teen heartthrob. Reflecting on his time starring on the popular musical show, Jogia tells PEOPLE exclusively how his experience differed from the 2024 Quiet on Set documentary, which explored some of the toxic culture of children’s television shows that young actors and others endured in the 1990s and 2000s.

"My experiences on set with my friends and colleagues were so specific and so different than what I witnessed on the documentary," says the author and actor. "But I also know that two truths can exist at the same time."

Jogia says he recalls his time on Victorious with his castmates turned friends as "a happy one."

"If I look back at my time on that show, and now knowing as an adult how hard I work, I think we just worked really hard," he explains. "We were on planes all the time to go to openings of things. We shot a show five days a week. We were on all summer doing stuff. Now as an adult looking back at that, I go like, 'Oh, that's too much to put on an 18-year-old kid.'"

Added Jogia, "My experience looking back trying to discern between what is childhood memory or young people's memory is interesting. It's all fragmented."

On Tuesday, Feb. 11, Jogia released his second book Autopsy, a collection of poetry that meditates on sex, heartbreak, depression and teen stardom.

Elsewhere in the interview, he discussed what the most revealing part of the book was for him.

"I think the most vulnerable part of the book is talking about what it's like to be commodified and sort of seen as someone without any density or without an internal world," Jogia explains. "When we have fantasies about people, it erases the reality."

For Jogia, "having people project their version or fantasy" onto him was something he experienced with "teen idol worship."

Autopsy is on sale now, wherever books are sold.