The role Aubrey Plaza manifested into existence: “It’s just so fucking amazing”
Maybe you believe in putting your faith in God, maybe it’s a more general concept like the universe, or perhaps you think it’s all bollocks, but at the end of the day, you don’t get anything if you don’t try for yourself and put in at least a little bit of hard work, which is what Aubrey Plaza learned when she finally reached a point in her career where she felt she could ‘manifest’ working with a proper cinematic legend.
She’d already gained fame as a cast member in Parks and Recreation, but in all honesty, Plaza’s film roles were, for a while, rather forgettable. While she appeared in a few gems, like Scott Pilgrim vs the World and even Monsters University, many bad comedies, like The To-Do List and Dirty Grandpa, didn’t exactly help her quest to work with a proper Hollywood icon.
I mean, sure, she got to star opposite Robert De Niro in the latter disaster, but what she really wanted was to appear in an instant classic helmed by a legendary filmmaker. With her role in The White Lotus, however, Plaza seemed to shift in the right direction and eventually reached where she’d always wanted to get to, which saw her get to work with Francis Ford Coppola in 2024.
Nevertheless, this didn’t come about without a bit of manifesting, she claims, and talking to Backstage, she said, “For a really long time, I’ve been manifesting to work with a brilliant director; who [could] be more brilliant than Francis Ford Coppola, one of the greatest living directors? It’s really hard to get parts in movies where you’re working with directors that have made a lot of films.”
Of her spate of not-so-great ventures prior to this break, she seemed to be kind about them, adding, “I don’t regret anything I’ve done. I love working with first-time directors; I’ll never stop doing that, because I love it so much. But there’s been a part of me for a while that’s like, I really want to work with a really seasoned director. I would say Francis Ford Coppola, that guy is seasoned.”
Plaza knew that there was a chance she wasn’t going to land a role in a film directed by the filmmaker behind The Godfather, but all she could do was try, at least, as she noted, “I auditioned for him with no expectations to get the part. I was really just like, ‘Man, I just want to meet the guy. Even if I have a five-minute Zoom, that would be enough for me’.”
Fortunately, the audition was a success, and gushing about it, she highlighted how much she loves Coppola’s passion, saying, “I feel lucky and completely humbled to be a part of Megalopolis. It’s just so fucking amazing to be around someone that has a passion for movies like me and feels the same way.”
Unfortunately, Megalopolis would turn out to be one of Coppola’s biggest flops, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise considering that he hasn’t received any significant kind of acclaim since he made Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992.
The movie, which saw her playing a TV presenter called Wow Platinum, starring alongside the likes of Adam Driver, Jon Voight, Giancarlo Esposito, and Laurence Fishburne, was torn apart by critics, finding the film too ambitious and describing it as a jumbled, poorly-written mess. Considering that Coppola had the project in the works for decades, you’d think it would’ve turned out better, but it was an astounding failure; it seems like Plaza forgot to manifest the film’s success as part of her wish.
