Why Jana From Young Sheldon Looks So Familiar
"Young Sheldon's" Georgie Cooper (Montana Jordan) had the usual teenage troubles since the show debuted in 2017, much of them girl-related. When he isn't feeling neglected in favor of his gifted brother, Sheldon (Iain Armitage), or fighting with his parents about his future, he's usually busy pursuing whatever girl has caught his eye. For most of Season 2 and the beginning of Season 3, he was trying to impress Veronica Duncan (Isabel May). Most recently, he's been trying to figure out what's happening with Mandy (Emily Osment), with whom he's having a child.
But from Season 3, Episode 11 ("A Live Chicken, a Fried Chicken and Holy Matrimony") until Season 5, Episode 3 ("Potential Energy and Hooch on a Park Bench"), Georgie's steady girlfriend was Jana Owens (Ava Allan), a classmate who was in love with him. Unfortunately, the best he could retort was "samesies."
The 22-year-old Allan has been slowly increasing her body of work ever since she booked her first television appearance in 2008, and if she looks familiar, it's very likely you've seen her before.
She played Young Amanda in True Jackson, VP
Ava Allan started modeling when she was a child, which eventually led to commercials. "I still do commercials, obviously, but when I turned 10, I got into film and television," she told Afterbuzz TV about where her desire to act came from. "I started falling in love with it; I guess you could say [it was] my first job. I know I was young, but I liked it, and I even enjoyed it more when I got to be on more sets." After uncredited appearances in "Leverage" and "It's Complicated," her first official role was in the Nickelodeon comedy "True Jackson, VP," starring Keke Palmer and Robbie Amell.
The series focuses on 15-year-old True Jackson (Palmer), who becomes the vice president of youth apparel at major fashion company MadStyle after she impresses its CEO, Max Madigan (Greg Proops). Amanda Cantwell (Danielle Bisutti) plays MadStyle's VP of Women's Apparel, and she views Jackson as a rival. Allan plays Young Amanda in flashbacks.
Allan's first appearance sees her with no lines, dressed up as a milk carton, but the second time we see her is when Amanda shows up at True's slumber party. As the two become more competitive playing a board game, we see a flashback showing Young Amanda flipping over a board game, declaring, "Nobody beats me; I'm the best!" In the show's series finale, Amanda falls into the Fountain of Youth and emerges permanently as Young Amanda.
Allan portrayed bully Paula in Love Is All You Need?
In 2016 Ava Allan co-starred in Kim Rocco Shields' film "Love Is All You Need?" which imagines us living in a world where being gay is accepted and being heterosexual is not. The film is based on Shields' 2011 short film of the same name. Allan portrays Paula Santilli, a student who bullies one of the protagonists, Emily Curtis (Kyla Kenedy), when she discovers that Emily likes her brother, Ian (Jacob Rodier). The film also stars the "Young Sheldon" actress who starred on Disney Channel, Emily Osment, who would go on to play Georgie's girlfriend after Allan's character, Jana, broke it off with him.
Allan and two of her co-stars were nominated for Young Artist Awards for their portrayals in the film, and Shields won best screenplay with co-writer David Tillman and Genius Produced at the Amsterdam Film Festival and Napa Valley Film Festival (via IMDb). After getting the script and realizing she'd seen the short film, Allan knew it was something she wanted to be a part of. "Paula is the teen bully in this film; she's terrible," Allan told Afterbuzz TV. "She's honestly a terrible person, and nothing with her and I are very similar. I saw her character as a challenge. The main thing I wanted to do is, I wanted to make sure that I portrayed her correctly."
She plays a high school bully in Pretty Little Liars
Ava Allan's next role was as a more deceptive kind of bully, playing Addison Derringer in two episodes of "Pretty Little Liars." She accuses Emily Fields (Shay Mitchell) of hitting on her and other girls on the swim team after she gets benched for an unexcused absence. While in a coffee shop, Emily sees Jenna Marshall (Tammin Sursok) send a text, and it appears that Derringer receives it in another room, which makes her even more suspicious. After her attempts to blackmail Emily backfires, we don't see Addison again until the show's finale a few episodes later.
A.D., one of the show's primary antagonists, was revealed at the ending of "Pretty Little Liars," and we get a year-later glimpse of Addison still being a bully. A short scene at the end of the episode reveals that Addison has gone missing when she and her friends are having a sleepover, with her friend telling the others, "I think I heard her scream."
Allan is mean to Jenna Ortega in Yes Day
2018 saw Ava Allan guest-starring on "Modern Family" as Amanda, Luke's (Nolan Gould) date that ditches him, and then Daisy Jones in "Suits." As Daisy, she portrayed an influencer with 50 million followers suing one of the firm's clients when a concealer makes her skin break out. In 2019 she made her film debut in "Most Likely to Murder," playing another high school bully, Hailey.
In 2021 she participated in "Yes Day" with Jennifer Garner and Jenna Ortega, playing a small role as Rosemary. While Ortega's character Katie Torres is freaking out at Fleekfest, frantically trying to find a charger and wanting to go home, Rosemary's friend, Mary (Katie Baker), grabs the phone and tosses it into the crowd while Rosemary looks on, laughing. While a non-speaking role may not be exciting, the Netflix comedy gave the young actress a ton of exposure, with Jennifer Garner posting on her Instagram that 53 million households watched in its first four weeks. We're excited to see Allan making her way even further into the public eye with her rising acting career.