The director who changed Aubrey Plaza’s life
From sitcom star to Golden Globe nominee and now a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Aubrey Plaza has been more than happy to move through the gears and tackle different challenges and opportunities during her rise to the top of the industry.
First breaking out as April Ludgate on Parks and Recreation, the deadpan snark that would soon become her defining on-screen characteristic was already on full display. Segueing into feature films and drama, Plaza would end up winning the most notable awards season recognition of her career when she nabbed that aforementioned Golden Globe nomination in the ‘Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film’ category for her contributions to the second season of The White Lotus.
Given that she’s most closely associated with dark humour and has a mischievous streak, it makes complete sense that Plaza would be obsessed with one of the most singular and boundary-pushing maverick filmmakers of the modern age, as she revealed to A.Frame: “I love John Waters. He changed my life.”
Naming 1994’s Serial Mom as one of the movies that made her want to be an actor, Plaza expanded on just how big of an influence it turned out to be: “That was my introduction to independent films, because up until that point, I had seen mostly blockbusters and more mainstream films,” she said. “And then when I started working at the video store, I started finding weird DVDs.”
Highlighting Waters and Serial Mom‘s impact, Plaza noted how “the humour and the absurdity of that film blew my mind”. Not only that, but it opened her eyes to just how outlandish the possibilities of cinema really were: “I had no idea that you could make something so weird that people would still accept and could be a movie in a movie theatre,” she continued. “That movie inspired me on so many levels and kind of gave me hope that it’s possible to make real art but in a mainstream way, and that you could do both.”
As fate would have it, Plaza ended up interviewing Waters for a City Arts & Lectures conversation, where she didn’t hold back on her admiration: “Serial Mom really did change my life. I saw that movie when I was a teenager. And up until that point, did not realize that people were making interesting, good, funny independent films.”
There was even talk that Plaza would get the opportunity to work with Waters when he returns to directing with the adaptation of his novel Liarmouth, and while it hasn’t happened as of yet, the star couldn’t have made her stance any clearer to Dazed Digital: “I’m throwing myself at his feet. I’ll do anything to get the part. And I mean anything.”
