“I loved how cathartic the story is, especially for young people in America who are drowning in debt. A colleague at the food delivery company puts her in touch with Youcef (Theo Rossi), an immigrant who has figured out a quick way to make an illegal buck, and Emily – ground down by student debt so large she can’t even pay off the monthly interest – is in. The closest she gets is the offer of an internship at an ad agency, but when she finds out that it’s unpaid and she protests, the boss (Gina Gershon) tells her she’s spoiled. She tries to get something better but an old conviction for assault makes that impossible. Plaza plays Emily, a gifted artist stuck in a deadening food-delivery job that offers no protections, no security and little pay. Written and directed by John Patton Ford, making his debut feature, Emily the Criminal is a tense, smart film. I wish I was more like Emily, in fact, and it was really good for me to play that character because it reminded me that I can assert myself, and I can set boundaries and stuff, because I’m really not good at that,” she says. But I totally care what people think, and I wish that I didn’t. I think that might come as a surprise to people because they project on to me this disaffected persona. “No, I’m a total people pleaser, and it’s something that I’m dealing with in therapy. So she’s not naturally like that, gleefully confounding people’s expectations? So I end up doing a character,” she says. Because that’s what makes me uncomfortable. “Each time I think, ‘Just surrender to the process, go with it.’ But I always go off script because I’m desperately trying to have a real moment there and even if it’s uncomfortable, I prefer that to doing something fake. “I’m just gonna get as drunk as I can and deny, deny, deny,” she replied.Ĭrime time … In Plaza’s latest film, Emily the Criminal, she runs scams to pay off student debt. “What’s your red carpet strategy this year?” Conan O’Brien asked her. “Thank you,” Plaza replied with half-held breath, as if taken aback by his comment (Letterman paused and then laughed in surprise). “I don’t know many people from Delaware,” David Letterman once said to her, after asking where she is from. I love it!” Whereas most celebrity appearances on those shows are full of carefully scripted cheese and schmooze, Plaza’s are more in the vein of Andy Kaufman, the late comedian who preferred uncomfortable silences over easy laughs. There are multiple YouTube compilations of her April-like appearances on US talkshows with titles such as “Aubrey Plaza is really WEIRD and AWKWARD. This is a common mistake people make with Plaza and she knows she hasn’t helped matters. And yet, despite all the colour coordination and professional polish, it takes a few moments to not see April Ludgate, the world’s most sarcastic intern, who asked where she got her haircut replied: “Prison.” She has just finished filming the wildly awaited second series of The White Lotus, and there is also an upcoming, and slightly improbable, Guy Ritchie film, Operation Fortune, in which she stars alongside Jason Statham and Hugh Grant. Today, Plaza is in a London hotel suite, dressed in a camel-coloured short skirt suit with a tan jumper and brown boots. That makes sense now, right? And of course – of course – Andy would end up marrying a Schwarzenegger,” she says, referring to Pratt’s real-life wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger (yes, as in, daughter of). Like, imagine if Chris’s career was happening to Andy. Thinking about any of the small-town characters from that star-making show – Tom, Ben, Ron – making it as big as the actors who played them have since (respectively, Ansari, Adam Scott, Nick Offerman) is surreal.īut of all the show’s cast members, it’s Chris Pratt, who played dopey Andy Dwyer, who has had the most unexpected career trajectory, going from doughy unknown to chiselled action star. And it is funny, thinking of April, who couldn’t be bothered to answer a phone, now producing and starring in acclaimed indie films like Ingrid Goes West and Emily the Criminal, as Plaza is. “I was saying how sometimes I imagine, like, what if my career was happening to April Ludgate, would that be funny?” she says, referring to her supremely cynical-verging-on-nihilistic character on the show.
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