Aubrey Plaza Takes Herself Seriously

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | October 1, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | October 1, 2024 |

You’d be forgiven for not taking Aubrey Plaza seriously as a dramatic actress. Most of us came to know her as the deadpan comedian from shows like Parks and Rec. But it turns out, she means business.

“I’m never going to not be hungry to find parts,” Plaza recently told The New York Times. “It’s almost a survival thing for me where I need to act or I’ll just die.” And when she finds a part, she takes it seriously.

“I don’t take anything lightly. Even if it’s a comedy, I treat it the same: I’m very intense about whatever I’m doing.”

It’s a funny thing to hear her say because she just seems so…blank all the time, which is not to discredit her talent in any way. She just doesn’t strike me as someone who’s trying very hard.

But Kathryn Hahn, her Agatha All Along co-star, goes way back with Plaza, and describes her as “hungry.”

“She’s a student and an old-school, cigar-smoking film director who master-classes the occasional film theory class. She loves old-school stardom. I remember her saying, ‘It’s all for the memoir,’” Hahn said.

She was met with that same intensity on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, in which she played a “power-hungry financial reporter” by the name of Wow Platinum. As far as the allegations about Coppola that allegedly took place on the set of the film, she said “I wasn’t on set that day, so I don’t really know what went down there,” but said the experience was “not for the faint of heart.”

“It was madness working on that film. My mentality every day was ‘every man for himself; only the strong survive here.’” Sounds like she was, and she did. Now, she’s ready for the real Hollywood test: hosting the Oscars.

“I’m putting it out there, I’m manifesting it, because I bleed for movies. I care,” she said.