Avantika claps back at racist trolls over her 'Mean Girls' character name change

After the new trailer for the revamped Mean Girls musical dropped, fans were excited to see how Tina Fey had updated the classic teen drama that made fetch happen. Since then, the movie has officially opened and is now playing across Canada.

But some racist Twitter trolls decided they were unhappy with the casting choices, starting with the inclusion of actress Avantika taking over the role of Karen, made famous 20 years ago by Amanda Seyfried. Now, Avantika is clapping back at the racist haters, reminding them that it’s not her job to educate them.

In a new Teen Vogue interview, the 18-year-old actress speaks with such dignity and clarity on the issue, telling the outlet, “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.”

 “But if you’re talking about how you can smell the character from the screen, you’re simply an ignorant person and a bigot,” she added, “and there’s nothing I can do about that.”

“I thought it was funny,” she continued, “how the movie was called Mean Girls and everybody was being a mean girl on Twitter.”

She also spoke about how important it was for her to take this role in terms of representation. “There’s a certain level of friction that comes from breaking boundaries and stereotypes. [This role] should help release us from the narrative that we can only play certain characters,” she said.

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by avantika (@avantika)

In fact, at the time, Avantika went so far as to screencap some of the hateful comments she saw and post them to her official Instagram, telling the outlet she did it because of the humour and irony behind it all. 

“Some of the hate comments were funny, so I was like ‘why not?’”

Telling the outlet that she grew up watching the original movie starring Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried, and Lacey Chabon, she recently was able to meet the original Karen, Seyfried at the InStyle and Lancome red carpet event on January 10, with the two Karens posing for funny photos together for the ‘gram. 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Amanda Seyfried💛 (@mingey)

“Karen meet Karen 🎬🎀,” Seyfried captioned the post.

You can read Avantika’s full interview with Teen Vogue here.