'Mean Girls' (2024) Star Avantika Reacts to Racist Comments After Trailer Dropped, Shares How She Worked to Change Character's Last Name

Avantika is opening up about racially-charged comments about her following the release of the Mean Girls trailer back in November.

The almost 19-year-old actress stars in the new movie musical as the ditzy Karen, who was played by Amanda Seyfried in the original movie 20 years ago.

After the trailer debuted, Avantika was met with racist comments about her casting, and now, she’s reacting to the negative things people said.

Keep reading to find out more…

“If anybody says anything about my acting, I’m like ‘please tell me more.’ If you don’t feel like you’re connecting to the character on screen, I should know,” she told Teen Vogue. “But if you’re talking about how you can smell the character from the screen, you’re simply an ignorant person and a bigot, and there’s nothing I can do about that. I thought it was funny how the movie was called Mean Girls and everybody was being a mean girl on Twitter.”

Avantika also opened up about working with writer Tina Fey to change her character’s name from Karen Smith to Karen Shetty to reflect her own South Indian heritage.

“This is a rare occasion in which South Indians, specifically someone of Telugu heritage, could get representation,” she said. “I told Tina [to name her Shetty] and the next day it was in the script.”

If you didn’t know, Avantika had quite the Bollywood career, appearing in seven films, before landing roles in the US. She has been in Disney Junior’s Mira, Royal Detective and the Disney+ series Diary of a Future President. She also starred in the Disney movie Spin, as well as Netflix’s Senior Year. Next up on her slate is a movie called Horrorscope!

Get to know 10 Fun Facts about Avantika here…

If you missed it, Avantika recently met the original Karen, Amanda Seyfried, and the two recreated a Mean Girls moment together!

Here’s how the new Mean Girls did at the box office on it’s opening weekend.