Illustration of Aubrey Plaza
Illustration by Katy Strutz
The New Yorker Interview

Aubrey Plaza in Real Life

The “White Lotus” star on her dream collaboration with Mike White, her long-standing feud with Joe Biden, and her decade-plus search for a role that resonated.

When Aubrey Plaza was cast in the second season of “The White Lotus,” on HBO, she asked the show’s creator, Mike White, what kind of role he was writing for her. White told Plaza that her character, Harper Spiller, would be “normal.” For most actors, that answer would be unremarkable, even underwhelming. But, for Plaza, it was likely a welcome change of pace. The actor and comedian, who is thirty-eight, became famous in the twenty-tens for playing a deadpan and disaffected intern, April Ludgate, on the NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation.” In the years since, she has developed a reputation for being exceedingly dry and awkward, both onscreen and off. Her antics in interviews and at awards shows—as when she made an acceptance speech on Amy Poehler’s behalf in which she thanked “the Devil and all the dark lords”—have inspired a BuzzFeed listicle with the headline “35 Times Aubrey Plaza Proved She’s Hollywood’s Weirdest and Coolest Celebrity,” and a YouTube compilation, with twenty-one million views, titled “Aubrey Plaza is really WEIRD and . . . AWKWARD. I love it!” After she hosted “Saturday Night Live,” last month, her performance was praised by The Atlantic: “Aubrey Plaza Gave ‘SNL’ Permission to Get Weird.”

Last fall, I interviewed Plaza at The New Yorker Festival, and her dry humor and trademark “weirdness” were on full display: she closed out the conversation by revealing that she has been “dabbling in a kind of druid paganism.” But when I called her for a follow-up interview, earlier this week, she could not have seemed more normal. She spoke animatedly about two upcoming projects—“Megalopolis,” a sci-fi drama from Francis Ford Coppola, and “Agatha: Coven of Chaos,” a spinoff of the Marvel TV series “WandaVision”—and said that, in her spare time, she’d been watching “The Sopranos” on her laptop. (She started watching back when she was shooting “The White Lotus” with co-star Michael Imperioli, but, she said, “I’ve just been savoring it, so I haven’t even finished.”) It’s entirely plausible that her weird-cool-girl image—which has attracted die-hard admirers who fantasize on the Internet about Plaza doing them harm—is a stage persona, or something closer to a defense mechanism. During our call, she talked about how “smart and analytical” women who have a tendency to be “cold and to the point” are often misread. In Plaza’s case, this manifested as early-career typecasting: critics, producers, and audiences alike were primed for more April Ludgate. “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” released not long after the première of “Parks and Rec,” leaned on her signature inscrutability; two years later, in the critically acclaimed indie “Safety Not Guaranteed,” she played another jaded intern (albeit one who goes time-travelling with Mark Duplass). Subsequent characters have felt less like April, and more like heightened versions of Plaza’s stage persona, spanning various genres. In the 2017 comedy “Ingrid Goes West,” she stars as an unhinged stalker who becomes obsessed with an Instagram influencer. Plaza doesn’t seem like the type to get sucked into social media, but when we talked, she did admit to having stalked someone in real life.

Last summer, Plaza gave her best performance to date in “Emily the Criminal,” a fast-paced, dramatic action thriller that she also produced. Her character, a volatile, desperate gig worker named Emily, engages in a credit-card grift in order to pay off her student-loan debt, with spiralling consequences. The film confirmed that Plaza could serve as the emotional anchor for a feature, all while stealing cars and Tasing her enemies. A few months after the movie’s release, Season 2 of “The White Lotus” premièred, and Plaza’s character, Harper, was quickly embraced as the most relatable among a largely batshit ensemble. A lawyer, Harper is hypercritical, but her critiques are usually right. She resents that her husband doesn’t seem sexually attracted to her anymore, and that he has dragged her on a couple’s trip with his douchey college friend and his relentlessly chipper wife, neither of whom bothered to vote in the last Presidential election. As the trip goes on, the relationship dynamics shift, but Harper never abandons her skepticism or self-protective snark. Plaza told me that the role is closer to who she truly is than any other part she’s played. Our conversations have been edited and condensed for clarity.

I thought that we could start by talking about “Emily the Criminal.” Someone on Twitter recently described the film as “Joker but for girls with student loans.” Your company, Evil Hag Productions, actually retweeted that. Do you agree with that characterization? When you were playing the character, did you see her as a hero who was down on her luck, or were you playing her as an antihero?

I was just playing her as a human being. I wouldn’t say she’s like the Joker at all. The Joker is evil! What the fuck? They retweeted that? I mean, yes, she’s an antihero. . . . which is one thing I really liked about the script. There aren’t a lot of female characters that take on that antihero status, because audiences are used to seeing female characters that they have to like. She’s flawed, but I don’t think she’s an evil psychopath and murderer—yet.

When I first read a script, I definitely think about larger themes, but I approach every role the same way: It’s really just about finding those things that I relate to, and trying to dig in and find the truth of the character. What’s driving her? Why is she doing these things? Especially in this movie—her choices are so insane. I’m just trying to create a fully realized, multidimensional human being that you feel is real. That’s how I approached her. And I think it’s up to the audience to decide how they feel about that.

So the fact that she was committing crimes because she was trying to pay off her student-loan debt—how important was that to you as a motivating factor? Would you have been as attracted to the script if, say, she had been trying to pay off medical debt, or if she was just trying to get rich and wasn’t actually in debt at all?

Since Biden just relieved student debt, it’s very timely, but it was written years ago—pre-pandemic, pre-Trump—and, unfortunately, some things haven’t changed. . . . But I wouldn’t say that that was the reason that I wanted to do the film. I’m not interested in making movies for political-statement reasons, or anything like that. I want to make entertaining, memorable movies, with characters that you care about. And the student-debt part of it was just something that I felt like a lot of people would care about.

You mentioned Biden. You are famously from Wilmington, Delaware. Have you ever met him?

I have. Many times. Me and Joe? Come on! The first time I met him, I was sixteen. I was at the Joe Biden youth-leadership conference. That was a very competitive situation, as a high-school student, to get into—they picked one student from, I believe, every high school. And then you’d show up, and it was an entire day’s worth of Joe Biden-themed events.

What’s a Joe Biden-themed event?

I don’t know. I actually don’t know why I said that. I take it back. The whole point of the conference was to allow students to speak out on different issues—and I have a terrible memory, so this could all be a lie, actually. But, from what I remember, they shuttled us from room to room, and there was a different speaker in each room, and it was all leading up to this climax where we were going to sit in the auditorium, and Joe himself was going to get up onstage and give his speech. It was supposed to be, like, “Let’s get the students’ point of view.” But I was very Tracy-Flick-in-“Election”-style aggressive as a student. I was really angry about the conference—and, in fact, I had a stare-down with Joe Biden from the audience, because he asked how it went, and I raised my hand immediately, and I was, like, “It’s bullshit. This conference sucks. You didn’t let us talk. This was supposed to be about the students.” I was always trying to rabble-rouse at that point. And he did not like it. I remember his face got really red. He used to get really fiery when he would make speeches. It was crazy.

Did you guys make up when he did his cameos on “Parks and Recreation”?

Yeah, we did. And, in fact, there’s a really funny story, because we shot at the White House when he was the Vice-President, and they gave us a tour of the Vice-President’s office. Before the tour, I saw him, and he knew my name. He was, like, “Aubrey!” Whenever I see him, he always tells me the same story. His first wife went to the same high school that I went to, so he always tells me about how he used to wait outside the convent for her, because it’s an all-girls Catholic school—and it’s a very sweet story, but I’ve heard it a lot. I was, like, “I know, Joe! She went to Ursuline!” But then, later, when we got a tour of the Vice-President’s office, I saw a note on his desk that had been written by his assistant on official White House stationery that said, “Aubrey Plaza”—underlined—“Wilmington, Delaware. You met her at the Joe Biden youth-leadership conference when she was sixteen.” There were bullet points about me. And I was, like, “I knew it! He doesn’t remember me at all!” But that’s how politicians are, you know? I pocketed it, and Mike Schur, the creator of “Parks and Rec,” was horrified. He was, like, “You cannot steal from the White House!” And I was, like, “I don’t give a shit! I know what he did! He didn’t know me!” And it’s sad because I lost it. Can you imagine if I’d kept it? I could’ve framed it or sold it. Now he’s the President—I had no idea. But, yeah, I stole it right off his desk. And there’s got to be cameras in the White House. But they didn’t do anything to me.

Was one of the things written on the note “most famous person in Delaware”? That was a thing for a while, right?

Yeah, the News Journal, which is a Delaware newspaper, did an online poll: “Who’s the most famous person in Delaware?” And I won! I beat Joe—this was before he was the President, but he didn’t get second place. He got, like, sixth place. It was me, maybe Valerie Bertinelli, and Henry Heimlich, the guy who created the Heimlich maneuver. I’m pretty sure it was us three. Or Judge Reinhold—also from Delaware. Ryan Phillippe. I could go on.

I’d like to talk about earlier in your career, before you were the most famous person in Delaware. My understanding is that you moved to L.A., and you landed your role in the movie “Funny People,” your role in “Parks and Rec,” and your role in “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” all in the same week. Is that right?

Yes, it was a very lucky week for me.

Was it your best week ever, or have you had better ones?

In hindsight, yes. I had no idea at the time, because I didn’t hear [that I got the roles] in real time. It was later on that I found out, like, Oh, my god, I got that, too? But, yeah, I was really lucky. I can pinpoint—I have a big-break moment. I was living in Astoria, performing at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. For “Funny People,” which is the Adam Sandler movie that Judd Apatow directed, Judd was doing a wide casting call to find this character, and he wanted to cast an unknown comedian. At the time, I was just doing improv and sketch comedy, but the character was a standup comedian. It’s a long story, but the short version is that, basically, I pretended to be a standup comedian—literally went up one night, did five minutes, and had my friend film it. Actually, Donald Glover, a.k.a. Childish Gambino, had a standup show in Long Island City. We were friends—we went to school together—and I just asked Donald, “Can I hop over there and do five minutes?” And he was, like, “Sure.” Then I sent that tape in, and they really loved it, so the casting director said, “O.K., well, now you have to fly out to L.A. to do a chemistry read. That’s the last step of this process.” And I didn’t have an agent or a manager or anything like that.

So I flew out to L.A. for this chemistry read, thinking, There’s no fucking way I’m gonna get this part. I have nothing to lose—whatever. And that week, Allison Jones, an incredible casting director who really changed my life, said, “Hey, would you mind going on some other meetings while you’re here?” And I was, like, “I’ll do whatever you want, lady!” So she sent me to meet Mike Schur and Greg Daniels, who eventually wrote me into the “Parks and Rec” pilot script based on our meeting. Again, I had no idea that that was even an audition. I was wearing jean shorts and just acting weird, according to Mike Schur. I don’t know what I was doing that was weird; I just didn’t know how meaningful the meeting was. And then, the day after that, she was, like, “Would you mind coming into the office and auditioning for this other Edgar Wright movie? It’ll be really quick.” And I was, like, “Sure, I don’t care.” I came in, I did an audition on camera, and then was, like, “Is that it? Thanks. All right. Bye.” And then Ed goes, “You do know that I’m the director, right? I’m Edgar.” I was, like, “No, I didn’t know that! What do you want from me? What’s everyone want from me?” I found out later that I had gotten all three of those things—and they were very big things to get when I had nothing.

How furious do people get when you tell them that story?

Furious. They hate me. I don’t know. It’s stupid! I got lucky.

Could you tell me a little bit more about what happened in the room with Mike Schur and Greg Daniels? What led to them casting you in “Parks and Rec”?

Again, my memory is very hazy. But this story has been told to me by Mike Schur. He always says, like, “And then I met the weirdest person I’ve ever met when she walked in.” And I’m still, like, “What did I do that was so weird, other than just be myself?” All I remember is that I was a huge fan of “The Office,” the meeting was on the set of “The Office,” and I kept seeing Mindy Kaling and B. J. Novak walk by. I was, like, “Oh, my God. They’re on ‘The Office.’ ” I couldn’t believe it. Because I had never been on set like that before. . . . so I was distracted. Greg Daniels then came in, and he’s a weirdo. I don’t remember who started the conversation, but one of us said something along the lines of “What do you think happens when we die?” Just an easy softball question. I also think there was a yo-yo involved—there was something that we were passing back and forth. And then we were talking about death, things got really dark, and Mike was just sitting at the opposite side of the desk watching us, like, “What am I watching here?” I think he’s probably used to people throwing themselves at him, like, “Oh, I gotta get this part.” And my attitude was just, like, “I don’t care about you. I’m trying to figure out what’s gonna happen when we die, dude!”

Did you inspire him to write “The Good Place”?

I don’t know. [Jokingly.] You know what? Yes! We can say it right now! But it was that, and then they told me a little bit about the pilot of “Parks and Rec.” They said, “We don’t know exactly, but we think Amy Poehler is gonna have an assistant character.” I was coming off of doing college internships, and I just pitched them the idea: “Well, what if the character is an intern, and she’s just doing it for college credit? She’s really good at it, but she doesn’t give a shit about parks and rec at all. Because Amy’s character obviously cares so much, that would be kind of funny.” And that was the beginning of April.

So you basically designed the character yourself.

I mean, in the original pilot, the character’s name was Aubrey. They literally wrote the character as me—a heightened version of me, I would say. But then the funny part about that, too, is that I had to audition to play myself, because the network didn’t know who I was.

Were you, like, in a waiting room full of people who looked like you?

No, it was just me—and I had a lot riding on it!

Do you prefer characters that have been written for you? Or is it more satisfying to put yourself into a character that wasn’t necessarily written with an actor in mind?

I do not prefer characters that are written for me. In fact, even to this day, when I accept a role, and I hear the words “We’re going to tailor it to you, because you’re so weird,” or whatever it is, I’m, like, “Don’t do that! I’m an actor! I just want to act!” The whole point is to play a character. I think people have a real perception of me. But I would also say that I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing. I mean, I’m me. I’m gonna bring myself to every part that I do anyway.

My understanding is that your character in “Legion” was written for a middle-aged man, and then you played the part, and none of the dialogue was changed.

Yes. And that was, again, a conversation that I had with [the showrunner] Noah Hawley, where he did say something along the lines of “I’m going to tailor it to you,” and I said, “Don’t! Just keep it exactly how it is. That’s what’s interesting about it.” I don’t know what people expect. I have no idea. But I do think I get away with things—if I’m sarcastic or even mean, people are, like, “I love it!” So it’s kind of great, because I don’t ever have to be nice. I can be, like, “It’s my weird character. I’m just so deadpan.” I always find it funny when someone will come up to me and they’ll be really deadpan. Like, some people kind of try to mirror me, but they don’t know me. They’re, like, “I’m really weird, too.” And I’m like, “O.K., be weird! I don’t care!” And then, if I’m in a bar, there’s a lot of people that ask me to punch them in the face and stuff. But I don’t really engage.

That’s a common one? “Punch me in the face”?

I’ve had it a lot! People will come up to me and be, like, “My friend really wants you to hit him.” Or, like, “My friend over there really wants you to slap him in the face” or “She really wants you to punch her in the face.” I don’t know what’s up with kids these days. I don’t know what that means.

Well, they must have loved “Emily the Criminal.”

Yeah, I’m gonna take it like that.

Let’s talk about “The White Lotus.” You play Harper in the new season. And this was another character that was written for you.

Yes.

Written for you, but not necessarily written to be like you?

Yes. Well, I don’t know! I would say this character is probably the closest to me—actual me, not April Ludgate, which everyone thinks is me—than anything I’ve done. . . . It just feels very, very personal and very close to home for me in a way that I’m, like, “I can’t even watch that.”

Did you ever end up watching?

I did not.

How online are you? “White Lotus” was one of those television moments where everyone would go on Twitter after an episode came out and talk about it and post memes and theories. Were you attuned to that, or were you just filming these other things and not watching the show and not paying attention to the tweets?

I mean, I wasn’t, like, scouring. But my phone has never been more active. People were texting me all the time, and so I was aware of it. . . . But, generally, I try to stay away from the Internet, because it usually just makes me feel bad.

What kind of feedback did you get from the people who were texting you about the show?

I remember a lot of people who would send me tweets or memes or whatever about how it’s so unrealistic that Harper and Ethan wouldn’t be attracted to each other.

I guess it is kind of rare to see sexual dysfunction occur between two characters who are young and attractive and rich.

And that’s what I loved about it. It’s so real. Like, to me, that is such a thing.

What was it about Harper, specifically, that made you relate to her so much?

Personality-wise, there was something about the character that resonated. It just reminded me a lot of the smart women in my life, and working women, who have a grounded part of themselves because they did not come from wealth and privilege, but then are thrust into that world later in life. So you have a different approach and a different attitude about things. And I’ve been with my husband for twelve years, and so I understood the, like, ebbs and flows of monogamous relationships and how you are confronted with times in your relationship where it’s rough and you have to kind of fall in love again. And, also, I don’t have children yet, and I have a lot of people in my life that do.

Over all, I feel that Harper is slightly misunderstood. I think that people who are really smart and analytical and have a critical-thinking mind sometimes get written off as just, like, a bitch or something. You become this kind of intimidating force. But you know that, inside, you’re just very vulnerable and sensitive, just like everybody else, but, because your exterior is so, at times, cold and to the point, it’s like you get things projected onto you that are just not true. . . . Mike knew me really well, certain things that people don’t know about me, and he captured them.

How did you first meet Mike White? What led to you being in the second season of the show?

It’s a very long story. But I will say that Mike and I met as friends at a party years ago. And I’ve always been a fan of his work. I love everything that he has done. And, in fact, “Chuck & Buck”—which I think is one of the best independent films ever, made by my dear friend Miguel Arteta, and by Mike, who wrote and stars in the movie—was a big inspiration for “Ingrid Goes West” for me. And we kind of bonded over that when I first met him—at Miguel’s house, actually. I had this project that I had been working on for years, a movie that I was really struggling to write, based on a very personal story that happened to me. And, somehow, in the conversation at the party, I pitched it to him—but not on purpose. Not in a work way. We were talking about Scandinavia, and I said, “Oh, well, I’ve actually been to Sweden, and I have this crazy story that I’ve been trying to write about.” And he was, like, “Oh, well, I really want to go to Sweden,” and so on. And then we connected over this story.

What was the story?

I dated this Swedish exchange student in high school, and I was very obsessed with him, because it was a first love kind of thing. And then, as all exchange programs do, it ended, and he went back to Sweden, and I was devastated. I was, like, “But we didn’t even break up!” So, even years later, any time I got out of a relationship, my brain would always go, Well, I’m still with Johan, technically. We never broke up. They just made us break up because it was over. So it was this thing that I was always kind of fixated on. And then, ten years after the exchange program had ended, when I was on “Parks and Rec”—early days—I decided to go to Sweden to find him, in a kind of stalkerish scenario. And I did. I went to Scandinavia for two weeks by myself. And the story of that trip was the story that I told Mike. Obviously, he’s very into stalking stories. He was eating it up. And then he was, like, “Well, I’ll write that with you.” And I was, like, “What? That thought never even crossed my fucking mind! You’re my dream collaborator.” And he was, like, “Yeah, I’ll do it, on one condition. And that is if you meet me in Stockholm, and we see Johan again.” Because this was now ten years after I’d done it the first time. And I said, “You don’t know me, mister, but I’m someone that will do that. I’m crazy.” He was, like, “I’m crazy, too.” And I was, like, “See ya in Sweden!” And that was it. I met Mike White in Stockholm, and we travelled together to stalk my Swedish-exchange-student boyfriend together. That is a true story. We did that, and I didn’t know him at all.

How did you explain his presence to Johan?

Well, both times, I told him I was on a work trip, which was true. Even though we were in a small town in Sweden, and he was, like, “There’s nothing going on here.” I just said to Johan, you know, “He’s my friend, and he’s gotta go to the train station to, uh, pick up his niece.” And so Mike didn’t spend time with him. He just met him very briefly and then was, like, “Goodbye.” But then he stalked us. So there were layers of stalking, where he would follow us and take pictures of us, and it was really twisted stuff. [Laughs.] The movie evolved, because Mike became part of the story. So, we had this creative collaboration for years. After that trip, we decided to do it again the next summer, but this time we went to Norway, and we travelled together there. We just had a real creative exploration. And then, after all of those trips we did together, he wrote a script—a beautiful script—and we were set to make this movie in the spring of 2020. He was in Finland, in preproduction, and we were gearing up to shoot the movie when the pandemic hit. And he was actually on one of the last flights back into the country before they shut the borders down. So all summer of 2020, I was, like, “Are we making the movie, or is it gonna fall apart?” And it fell apart, and then he pivoted to “The White Lotus.” So, the movie never happened, but then “White Lotus,” obviously, is a huge success. And he didn’t forget about me. He just told me, “Don’t take a job next year. I want to work with you on this show,” because I think we just wanted to work together so badly. So it’s a really wild story of how I ended up on “White Lotus,” but it has to do with my Swedish-exchange-student boyfriend.

What did you think about the narrative arc that White wrote for you in “The White Lotus,” and how Harper’s story ended with Ethan? The two reconcile at the end, but were you thinking about the other ways it could go?

I did feel strongly at times that another truthful ending would be something that is not so good. That day when we were shooting in the airport, I felt that maybe we should do a take where it’s not so obvious that things are O.K. But [because the show wasn’t filmed chronologically] I hadn’t shot a lot of the ending stuff at that point. It was just a kind of instinct that I had, and Mike didn’t want that. But someone said something to me about that scene—they said, “I could feel, under the smile, that there’s something else going on.” I’m, like, “Really? That’d be really interesting.”

Yeah, I did not come away feeling as though it’s all good. There’s a look, a suggestion that this is maybe just temporary.

O.K., well, that’s exactly how I was feeling. So I’m glad that that came through. That’s great. ♦