Daniella Monet Talks Returning to ‘Hollywood Arts’ & Trina’s Life Since ‘Victorious’

Not all of us can “Make it Shine.” Someone’s gotta hold it down at Hollywood Arts.

Whether it comes to finding love or landing her next gig, Daniella Monet‘s mentality for her Hollywood Arts character is “Trina’s gonna Trina.” For anyone who’s seen Victorious, this philosophy rings true. If there’s one thing Trina has always done right, it’s being herself.

On October 15, over 16 years after the premiere of Victorious, beloved, chaotic, and semi-untalented Trina Vega is returning to our screens in Hollywood Arts, where she is set to return to her high school as a substitute teacher. Ahead of the Netflix premiere, Monet sat down with TV Insider to reveal what Trina has been up to since graduating from Hollywood Arts and give us a sense of where the other Victorious stars ended up. (Cameos, anyone?)

Taking us back to the moment she read the pilot and found out where life had taken Trina, Monet explained, “It made a lot of sense. It felt like Trina was being honored as the Trina that we hopefully know and love, and I was really happy.”

At this point in Trina’s life, she is a “struggling actress,” which, Monet pointed out, means, “We kind of left her where we found her, just trying to become famous and popular and successful.” However, stepping (or, stumbling, as she put it) into this new substitute teaching role allows her to “learn that she can be herself, but also feel purposeful.”

According to Monet, the Hollywood Arts team was “careful” about revealing the fate of other Victorious cast members in the original scripts, such as Leon Thomas III, Avan Jogia, Elizabeth Gillies, Matt Bennett, and Ariana Grande, with the hope that they could have a say if/when they return. She explained, “If it has been spoken about [in Season 1], I don’t want to spoil it because that’s their story to tell.”

However, one character we do know quite a bit about is Trina’s sister, Tori (Victoria Justice). “We definitely think that Tori is a big superstar,” she revealed. “So I would say that that’s been spoken about, and I also think that’s probably what the audience would assume as well.”

When it comes to Trina, her life since Victorious is a little less clear-cut. “When I think about Trina, and I think about her versus, you know, any of the other cast members on Victorious, I could probably paint a better picture for some of the other [cast members] as to what they’ve been up to,” Monet confessed. “But when I think about Trina, I’m like, yeah, she was just trying to get famous, and that’s it.” For Trina, every day is a new adventure.

Of course, fans will remember that one of Trina’s biggest adventures in the original series was her one-woman show, which featured the now-legendary musical number “Chicago,” pronounced “She-cago” for those who don’t know. While it’s still a mystery whether we’ll be seeing a reprise of that masterpiece in the new spinoff, Monet confirmed, “In our new world of Hollywood Arts, we’ve chosen the right spots to sprinkle in the lore and the Easter eggs.”

Watch our full preview with Daniella Monet above!

Hollywood Arts, Season 1, October 15, Netflix