Aubrey Plaza on not taking any s--- and why White Lotus was a ‘weird, psychological experiment’
Aubrey Plaza reveals how she tapped into her years of struggle for her new criminal role, and why the intense, volatile new season of The White Lotus messed with her head.
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In the increasingly unlikely event that Aubrey Plaza’s acting career goes off the boil, at least she now has a handy skill to fall back on thanks to her new movie.
In the timely thriller Emily the Criminal, the American actor and comedian plays an aspiring graphic designer whose desperate attempts to get ahead – or just break even – are thwarted by a previous conviction for assault and mountain of student loan debts. Struggling to pay the bills while working a menial, exploitative job in catering, she becomes involved in a credit card fraud ring, which promises easy, quick cash.
On day one of filming, the prop master wheeled in a machine that makes fake credit cards and, after a crash course in how to use it, Plaza proved to be a pro.
“That was fun, learning how to make fake credit cards,” she says with a laugh over Zoom from the UK, where Emily the Criminal screened as part of the London Film Festival after earning praise at Sundance earlier this year.
“That’s the point about being an actor. You never know what you’re going to learn. So, I have all these things that I can put in my back pocket in case anything does go south for me.”
Writer-director John Patton Ford based his script for the movie on his own experiences of graduating with $90,000 of student debts – not uncommon in modern America – and a desire to create a “millennial Dirty Harry” character. Plaza, who started in sketch and improv comedy, jumped at the chance to play a “loose cannon” who is fed up with an unequal system that she sees as being stacked against her.
“I felt like it would be really fun to play someone that doesn’t take s--- from anybody and just takes matters into her own hands,” she says. “It felt fun and challenging in a new way.”
Since her breakout role as April Ludgate in Parks and Recreation, Plaza has built an impressive and respected resume in TV and film, with roles in mainstream fare such as Happiest Season, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates and Bad Grandpa, as well as acclaimed indies Ingrid Goes West and Black Bear.
Her star is further set to rise with the much delayed Guy Ritchie action movie Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre and a main role in the second season of The White Lotus.
But despite her recent successes, Plaza still remembers the tough times and playing Emily made her reflect on her years of struggle trying to break into comedy and acting while studying filmmaking in New York. While she never resorted to Emily’s increasingly desperate criminal measures, she recalls the feeling of being on the lowest rung and not having the choice and opportunity that comes with financial security.
“I definitely had a period of time in New York where I was grinding it out, working odd jobs, working in the restaurant industry, working in temp agencies, and showing up every day not knowing what the next job is going to be,” she says.
“I remember that feeling of getting on the subway at 4.30 or 5 in the morning to go open a coffee shop downtown and dealing with all these asshole businessmen. I definitely thought about that a lot for the movie. I thought about how it feels to be surrounded by successful people and be so close to it but not be able to live that life and to want it so badly.”
One of Plaza’s jobs at the time was as an NBC Page, taking tourists around the famous New York network – until she was encouraged to leave for being a little free and easy with the strict studio conventions. After getting bored repeating the same spiel over and over to each new tour group, she and some of her fellow guides would challenge each other to introduce weird random words (“like chicken, or whatever”) and not get found out.
“I had fun while I was there but I was clearly not totally suited for that program, I guess,” she says. “I always had one leg out the door – I just wanted to be an actor and comedian, so I was taking every opportunity I could to make it some kind of weird performance art piece. I’ve definitely been not good at falling in line and having a certain structure like that. It was good while it lasted.”
Nevertheless, Plaza persevered, and puts her tenacity down to her parents’ work ethic. Her mother Bernadette and father David rose from humble beginnings to become a lawyer and a financial adviser respectively, and Plaza says she’s always been grateful for and inspired by their sacrifices for her and her younger sisters.
“They had me when they were 19, and they really worked hard when I was a baby,” she says. “I grew up watching two really ambitious people trying to make something out of themselves and doing all kinds of different jobs. I grew up around that feeling of just trying to prove yourself and be somebody, and carried that through into the acting world.”
Emily the Criminal also bolsters Plaza’s burgeoning reputation as a producer – she was integrally involved in every stage of the film from development and financing, right up to the lean, mean 20-day shoot doing her own driving and fighting stunts on the streets of Los Angeles.
The experience could have been hardly more different from HBO’s lavish production of the second season of The White Lotus, filmed at the ritzy Four Seasons San Domenica Palace hotel in Sicily this year.
Like the first season, which was shot in Hawaii, the new episodes will focus on a disparate group of Americans behaving badly abroad, with a cast that also includes Michael Imperioli, F. Murray Abraham, Theo James and the returning Jennifer Coolidge. And, like the volcanic Mount Etna rumbling away ominously on the Italian island, Plaza promises that this season will be “a little more volatile”.
“There’s a wild feeling on the island,” she says. “When a volcano is the backdrop of your vacation and your trip, there is something unconscious that happens where you know that thing could erupt at any moment. It’s like a metaphor – there are a lot of eruptions in the season. Take that for what you will.”
Creator Mike White wrote the part of Harper White with friend and occasional travel companion Plaza in mind. When she first read the script, the actor thought that playing a character so close to her real self was going to make her job easier but, once the shoot started, “it was challenging because it was so personal”. Shaking the character off at the end of the day was also difficult, compounded by the fact that they were also all staying in the hotel they were filming in.
“There’s no separation there, so that makes it complicated as well,” she says. “It became this kind of weird psychological experience. But we are all friends and the cast is incredible. We all supported each other and I think we all knew we were doing something special.”
Plaza says she’s too “in it” to judge whether the new group of holiday-makers is as awful as the first season’s but pays tribute to White for his ability to create such compelling black comedy from his own keen observations.
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“He’s a genius because he writes what he knows,” Plaza says. “All he does is travel – I’ve travelled with him in fact – and I know that’s what he’s most interested in. He’s cracked the code for himself and figured out a way to write what he knows. Watching Americans on vacation, in these luxury, five-star resorts, he has spent years eavesdropping on these conversations with these kinds of people. So, I think he finally just wrote it all down and it’s very entertaining.”
Emily The Criminal is available to own and rent from October 26. The White Lotus, Season 2, October 31, BINGE
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