Avantika Vandanapu has already had a pretty wild career for someone who started acting as a child. The Bay Area-born actress began working in Telugu cinema before moving into American projects, eventually landing the lead in Disney's Spin and appearing in Senior Year, Mean Girls, Tarot, and Prime Video's Big Girls Don't Cry.
We talk about growing up between California and India, starting her career so young, and making the jump from Telugu films to becoming a Disney lead. Her story about getting the Spin audition through her mom's relentless detective work is particularly great, as is the moment when Disney asked her to translate something into Hindi and she realized that understanding a language and actually translating it on command are two very different things.
We get into being South Asian, being Gen Z, and how those identities shift depending on the room you're in. We also manage to talk R&B and DJing, and establish that I apparently have enough dad jokes to justify my new(ish) status as a father.
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