Age: 21
female
Avantika Vandanapu (born 25 January 2005), sometimes credited mononymously as Avantika, is an American actress and dancer. She has worked in several Indian films in the Telugu and Tamil languages. In 2021, she starred in the Disney Channel Original Movie Spin and in 2022, played the role of Janet Singh in the American comedy Senior Year. She was also the second winner of the Zee TV reality show Dance India Dance Lil Masters North America. In 2024, she played the role of Karen Shetty in Mean Girls, a film adaptation of the Broadway show adaption of the 2004 film Mean Girls. She also starred in the supernatural horror film “TAROT” playing Paige.
A Tempest of Tea is a dark, stylized fantasy heist thriller directed by Park Chan-wook and written by Leigh Bardugo. Set in White Roaring, the gritty, gothic capital of the colonizing Ettenian Empire, the story follows Arthie Casimir (Avantika), a sharp seventeen-year-old criminal mastermind. By day, Arthie runs Spindrift, an upscale, elegant tea room catering to high society. By night, she flips a secret lever to transform it into an illegal, high-stakes bloodhouse for the city's hidden vampire underworld.When her beloved establishment is threatened with foreclosure by the ruthless Lady Linden (Courtney Ford), head of the capitalist Ettenia Joint Company, Arthie is forced to make a desperate deal with a wealthy elite contact, Penn Arundel (Dylan Kelly). To save her home, she must infiltrate the Athereum—the heavily guarded, impenetrable vampire palace—and steal an ancient, classified ledger that exposes the empire's darkest political secrets.To execute the impossible mission, Arthie assembles a ragtag crew of outcasts: her protective adopted brother and lethal marksman, Jin (Sean Lew); a proper but rebellious expert forge apprentice, Flick (Ava Telek); the brooding, aristocratic vampire Matteo (Jacopo Barzaghi); and a haunted vampire ally, Rose (Emilia Jones). Standing in their way are institutional gatekeepers Eleanore and Elise Thorne (Ashley Puzemis and Eloise Rakic-Platt), and Laith Sayaad (Adam Abbou), the fiercely dangerous, white-haired high captain of the Horned Guard who shares a tense, magnetic rivalry with Arthie.As the ticking-clock heist unfolds to a haunting, percussion-heavy gothic score by Ramin Djawadi, the crew must navigate blood-slicked ballrooms, deceptive political alliances, and deadly betrayals. Arthie soon realizes that they aren't just stealing a ledger—they are uncovering a massive, systemic conspiracy that could tear the empire apart and ignite a revolution.
