Avan Jogia is feeling like a king these days – as he should! The 23-year-old actor is about to star in the most high-profile project of his career: playing King Tut in the mini-series Tut, airing over three nights on Spike beginning Sunday. “I’ve always wanted to have the responsibility of something this big,” says Avan, “so to be given it as an actor is a really cool experience.”
Playing the title character of an epic miniseries is certainly a lot of responsibility, especially a real figure about whom not a lot of information is known. “He was thrust on to the throne at a very young age, at nine years old,” he explains about the former ancient Egyptian pharaoh. “And then he died at 19 in very mysterious circumstances.”
Tut aims to shed some light on the years between the young king’s ascension to the throne and his death. “It’s a very tragic story,” offers Avan. “He lost two children. No one took him seriously. How we retell it is a story of resiliency against all that.” The actor, who was raised in Vancouver, had to find some resilience of his own, shooting for four gruelling months in the Moroccan heat. “It’s weird. I didn’t think about it at the time as ‘oh, this is going to be so much work‘ but it was. Half of it was action stuff, riding chariots in 90-degree sun, right above you it’s like 110. That’s in Fahrenheit, I don’t know what it is in Celsius considering I’m Canadian!”
Avan Jogia, who previously appeared on ABC Family’s Twisted, already has more than a million followers on both Twitter and Instagram and after starring in this massive miniseries, the Moroccan sun won’t be the only thing that’s hot!
For more with Avan, watch below!
