Warning: Major spoilers ahead for the finale of 56 Days.
Dove Cameron and Avan Jogia like to say that they grew up in the same “neighborhood,” so to speak. In the early 2010s, when they both came of age, Cameron and Jogia broke out on teen sitcoms on rival networks. Around the time that Jogia wrapped up his run as heartthrob Beck Oliver on Nickelodeon’s Victorious, Cameron became one of Disney’s most valuable Gen Z power players, starring as the titular twins in Liv and Maddie—which earned her a Daytime Emmy Award—and then as the daughter of Maleficent and Hades in the Descendants franchise.
Despite presumably running in the same circles for years, Cameron and Jogia had never met until they were offered the lead roles in 56 Days, a new Prime Video erotic thriller that is a far cry from their days on hyper-stylized teen sitcoms. Based on Catherine Ryan Howard’s 2021 novel and executive-produced by visionary horror filmmaker James Wan, the eight-episode series follows Cameron’s Megan Martin, who, under the alias of Ciara Wyse, hatches a plot to worm her way back into the life of Jogia’s Oliver St. Ledger, who has changed his surname to Kennedy after being indirectly responsible for the death of Megan’s brother, Shane.
Speaking on a joint video call from New York City, Cameron and Jogia open up to Teen Vogue about the root of their characters’ dangerous attraction, how they wanted to explore a borderline toxic romance built on secrets and lies—and why they, unlike some of their fellow former child actors, are not preoccupied with trying to outrun their earliest work.
Dove Cameron: I think they’re both really intelligent human beings. Honestly, what she sees in him initially is his complexity and intelligence. She starts to go, “Oh, wait a minute. This isn’t the boy that I’ve been projecting all of my pain and my trauma onto. [But] yes it is, because he is still guilty and culpable for the things I am so wounded by.” She starts to grapple with the person that she’s built up in her mind vs. the person she sees in front of her. On a very human level, she begins to see through him, and see his defense mechanisms, and what he’s attempting to show her vs. what he doesn’t want her to see. That creates a very human level of empathy. She’s like, “Oh, I’m the same.”
Avan Jogia: It’s really comforting to them that they can be themselves with each other.
DC: The ugliest, darkest sides; the broken parts of their brain that really don’t function in a normal society. That’s also part of it. Like, “I’m a little bit off. You’re a little bit off. We’re both safe to be every iteration of ourselves with each other.”
AJ: Obviously, Megan’s willing to do a lot for what she wants. But then, at the very end of the show, she does this insane thing for Oliver [by killing Oliver’s creepy therapist, who told Shane to commit suicide, and then dissolving the body in their bathtub]. They’re survivalists, and when they merge, finally, they’re like, “Okay, so now we have doubled the mental brain power to survive and maybe thrive in the world.” The world should be concerned that they’ve powered up and linked together. [They both laugh.]
DC: Agreed, agreed!
AJ: They’re morally terrible. But for them, they finally found someone that’s a match—and there’s somebody for everyone! [Laughs]
DC: I don’t think it’s a specific moment. It’s the same as if someone asked me when exactly did I fall in love with my partner. I wouldn’t be like, “This day, at this time.” I’d be like, “It was a slow amalgamation [of moments].”
There’s a power imbalance for the first four episodes, where she is manipulating him. He has no idea that she is tailoring her every move and whim—the way she brushes her hair out of her face, the way she’s looking up at him. She’s playing this kind of damsel in distress, [while being] smarter than him. She’s playing all of the tropes, and he’s kind of defenseless. So she really has the first point of view, of seeing him more clearly than he can see her.
AJ: That’s really astute. You definitely get a better view of him than he has of himself.
DC: Well, because she already knows what he did [by killing another student and framing her brother].
AJ: That’s right.
DC: So whenever she’s like, “Tell me what the f*ck you did,” and he’s like, “No, I can’t,” she’s like, “Oh my God!” [Cameron jokingly throws her hands up in disgust.] She’s not like, “Who are you?!” She’s like, “Just say it, because at this point it’s going to be fine. [Jogia laughs.] I’m already in! I love you already. It’s been two weeks.” She really folded way too quick.
AJ: So quick!
DC: But also, Megan’s not normal. The way that I was able to look past Ciara’s quick forgiveness of him and her jump into falling in love with him is that her neurons and her brain are so tangled. She’s got trauma, pain, hate, suffering, love and romance, and being chosen and choosing—she’s gotten all of those things so f*cked [up] in her.
AJ: Yeah. When you ask yourself the question, Why would the character do this? And then you look at all of the stuff that’s happened to them and what they’re doing, you’re like, Well, yeah, that makes sense.
DC: But you can’t gauge it based on what you would do. [Jogia laughs and nods.] She does that because she’s got some wires crossed, and she’s also looking to be seen and to see, and her family is so far gone.
AJ: Also, it’s a nice place out of town [from Megan’s poor lifestyle], realistically.
DC: Yeah, but I think she’s thinking, I was always driving the ship. I have allowed him to make things good, in my book. I believe he’s a good person. I’m still the captain. She views herself as an emotional provider for him, so she’s like, “I’m actually providing the life. You can provide the lifestyle. And in that way, we’re equals.” Do you know what I mean?
AJ: Ah, yes. [She] is contributing a lot to his lifestyle, because he’s lonely. He goes to work, goes home, works out, tries to sleep, can’t [sleep]. His life is really sad, and she does put a lot of joy and interest into his life.
DC: We talked a lot about this, because initially, in the first episode, the two intimacy scenes that you see, there’s a very clear red flag, power dynamic, SOS thing happening, where he’s like, “I’m in control,” and she’s like [puts her hands up in defense], “Okay.” It’s not actually what’s happening, because she is in control and she’s letting him believe this, like we talked about, but it is a clear marker for how their dynamic at least looks in a tableau.
AJ: Yeah, and then as the series goes on, every single intimacy scene becomes a marker of the shift. That’s really how we count the moments of change, between the performance of a power dynamic and [Ciara] supplicating to him in this way. And then as we go on, we’re really intimate like a real couple, which is telling of how far they go.
DC: Yeah. It becomes more about a real romantic connection, less about a display of power dynamics or performance or anything like that. It became a device for the show, like an audience check-in: “How is this dynamic different? How is the movement different?” We shot them differently as we went on. It was a really interesting sort of way [into their inner lives], because the characters are doing so much performance in everyday conversation that we wanted the intimacy scenes to be the least performed thing, and to be the most revealing of their dynamic.
DC: They were still writing, so every time we would shoot a new episode, we would be like, “Hey, do we get a script for the next one?” We were waiting to see how the show was going to go. We didn’t know how it was going to end when we signed on.
AJ: For me, as an actor, it doesn’t change a thing. I try to play what’s there, and then you tell me where we’re going.
DC: But I think that they told us before we got the final episode. They told us from the beginning, like episode one, “It’s not going to be like how the book ends, because we don’t want people to read the book and then automatically know what happens in the show.” We learned about it [around] episode six—really late in the game. They were like, “Okay, so you guys escape together and you end up on an island—and you have a kid.” And we were like, “Whoa!”
AJ: “What?!” They’re like, “[We’re shooting the ending in] Mexico.” “It’s absolutely going to be Jamaica.” Remember they kept on [changing locations]—
DC: —and then they were like, “We’re going to shoot it on a green screen.” And they’re like, “We’re never going to shoot it on a green screen!”
AJ: So we’re just like, “Hey, where, when, what is it? What are we doing?!”
DC: We shot it in Mexico—but good question! Because it would’ve been someplace secret. They’re not going to end up at a local [island], like Hawaii….
AJ: It’s not an all-inclusive resort, and they are still on the run. It’d be interesting to see how those types of people would be as parents, but also, what is their life actually going to look like together? There’s a lot of questions at the end of [the season].
DC: Good question. I think, with the way that the album has found its shape now—because it’s always like that: You start writing in one direction, and then you lean in really hard that way, and then you write something else, and it informs the shape and it just changes.
The album that I had finished [she proceeds to laugh so hard that she snorts] at the top of 2024 that was done, done, done, and I posted on Instagram, like, “The album’s done!” And everybody was like, “Album this year!” multiple times. That album got really cannibalized by the releasing of the singles. It got really taken apart, and it lost a lot of its key players that were holding it down thematically.
So now that those [songs] are out as singles, I really don’t want to do the thing where half of the singles are now on the album. I want to release a new body of work, for the most part—maybe one or two older songs. But it’s transformed three different times. It’s different now because I’m older, and I have different taste, and I’ve changed as a person, and I think it’s going to end up being a lot more organic than a lot of my previous music. Especially the stuff I was releasing last year—it was very dance- and synth-heavy, highly produced and shiny; this stuff is going to be a lot more organic, very orchestral.
AJ: We’ve talked about this a lot privately, but also in [interviews] like this. I’m always just attracted to challenging myself, and it’s led me to a bunch of different avenues around the creative fields. I write books and I direct movies, and I don’t really see the grand narrative maybe the way that other people do. I just can’t see myself the way that other people see me. There used to be a moment like, “Now, the teen star’s no longer doing that. They’re going to shake off the chains.” I’m just a part of a larger and longer creative life than that, so I just go towards what moves me. And as a 34-year-old—
DC: Whoa!
AJ: I’ve been part of a larger natural progression for a while.
DC: I guess I know how people see me, but I think the issue is, to your point, being stuck in amber….
AJ: Which I love, by the way. A very poetic way of saying it.
DC: Yeah, it’s very true. You’re crystallized. When I was crystallized in people’s brains, I was so young. I was 17 to 19, and now I’m 30, so it’s not like [mocking a deep voice], “I’m breaking out!” It’s been so over for me. [Jogia laughs.] It was a third of my life ago, so I understand it. I think the best way I can explain the feeling is, like, I loved my time on Disney. I have such a warm connection to the fans. I still see people all the time, and we sing Descendants songs together, and they want me to do a “BAM WHAT!” or something. To me, it’s sweet.
AJ: It’s super sweet.
DC: It’s neither heavy and dark, nor my favorite part of my career.
AJ: I agree.
DC: It’s just a sweet, lovely thing—
AJ: I think that’s what the problem is. There’s a narrative cliché of, “Don’t they want to distance themselves from the thing they did?”
DC: That, or the other way around like, “They’re not grateful enough.” I really feel warm and neutral [about it].
AJ: Yeah, warm and neutral. That’s my feelings as well. Humans like to have things that echo things they already understand, and that’s maybe an older, early-2000s paradigm, which I just don’t share. I really loved my time with [Victorious]. Those are my college friends, and I had such warm feelings about it. But it’s not relative to my life as I make creative decisions.
DC: Totally.
AJ: I don’t make creative decisions to get away from it—
DC: —to get away from it, or go back to it.
AJ: [Laughs] It’s great. I heard there’s some really cool things that they’ve shot, so I’m actually really excited to hear it and see it.
