Aubrey Plaza, the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, is a top young actress and producer who is enjoying the biggest year of her career — indeed, in late 2022, she starred in and produced John Patton Ford’s acclaimed indie film Emily the Criminal and gave a standout supporting turn on the second season of Mike White’s popular HBO drama series The White Lotus; and in early 2023, she hosted Saturday Night Live, garnering widespread praise.
Since bursting onto the scene about 15 years ago in comedies on screens big and small — most notably on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, on which she played the key supporting part of April Ludgate, an apathetic intern, for seven seasons spanning 2009 through 2015 — Plaza has, in the words of the New York Times, “continually reinvented herself,” and, per the Los Angeles Times, “emerged as a performer of surprising depth and range, and a creative force to be reckoned with behind the camera too.” This year, Amy Poehler described her as “one of the most interesting actors working today,” and TIME magazine selected as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
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Over the course of this episode, the 38-year-old reflects on how she was changed by a freak stroke that she suffered at the age of 21; the insane first week that she ever spent in Los Angeles, during which she landed her parts in Funny People, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Parks and Rec; the sense of resentment that she felt, for a time, about being regarded by some as a good fit only for “deadpan” characters like April; why, having twice hosted the Spirit Awards, she would like to host the Oscars; two recently completed but not yet released projects, Disney+ WandaVision spinoff Agatha: Coven of Chaos and Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed final film Megalopolis; plus more.
