All About Aubrey - V Magazine

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Don’t take this the wrong way, but Aubrey Plaza is kind of a witch. Her ability to completely dominate her interviewers via deadpan aloofness, assorted accents, and myriad antics, leaves her targets completely spellbound, a little scared, and, well, charmed. And she’s always been like this. “I think that’s just how I move through the world, I’m always going for the joke,” Plaza tells V over Zoom. “I get nervous for interviews and the way I deal with that is by entertaining myself.”

In a now-famous, pre-Emmy red carpet interview in 2010, reporter Michael Ausiello asked Plaza if he could see her ring. With a perfected mockumentary-style look at the camera (refined over seven seasons of playing the sardonic April Ludgate on NBC’s Parks and Recreation), and a devilish smirk, she lifted up her middle finger.

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“The Judy Garland fascination started for me pretty young. I was probably twelve when most of my friends were getting into grunge and I was just really into old Hollywood.”

—Aubrey Plaza for V151 Winter 2024 Issue

Ausiello got a bit flustered—as it was clear that, in just two seconds, Plaza had taken control of his interview—and then he prudishly stated, “That’s actually kind of offensive.” To which Plaza replied with a put-on bimbo playfulness, smiling and chewing gum, “It’s just a finger, it’s the only one the ring fits on.” While Ausiello was still talking, she walked away, turned around to face the camera once more, and laughed.

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It makes perfect sense, given her naturally wicked ways, that Plaza was just inducted into the Marvel Cinematic Universe via her portrayal of Rio Vidal, the Green Witch on Disney+’s Agatha All Along. The show’s titular character, Agatha Harkness, played by Kathryn Hahn, is Vidal’s rival, and their dynamic is complicated—in a gay way. “Kathryn and I are both very intense in our approach to acting, so I knew it was going to be really charged,” Plaza reveals, adding that it was a “dream come true” to play Hahn’s romantic counterpart. At one point in the series, Vidal slices Harkness’ hand open with a dagger and heals the open wound by licking it. Harkness calls her heartless. Vidal corrects her, noting that she does indeed have a heart, a black one, and it beats just for her.

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If that doesn’t see a mass enrollment of women into the Marvel fanbase, nothing will.

Agatha All Along also features Plaza’s ex-roommate, the one and only Patti LuPone. The pair shacked up last winter for the entire run of Plaza’s Broadway debut in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, and have remained twin flames ever since. (Apropos of that status, the two appeared on Hot Ones, the spicy wing web-show, this past September, and their rapport was sickeningly entertaining.) Though they had shared a space—LuPone even washed and folded Plaza’s undies—Agatha All Along was their first time having to act like professionals around each other. “She and I love doing dumb bits and stupid characters,” Plaza says, with the slightest hint of unexpected shyness in her voice. “We’re both, like, troublemakers.”

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At the time of our interview, Plaza is in the thick of a demanding press storm. In just ten days’ time, she was on the Today Show twice—“Hoda was like, ‘You again?’” Plaza jokes. She also appeared on the Daily Show, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and was interviewed by the Times and NPR. Later that week, she did a six-hour shoot for V and a top-secret performance at Joe’s Pub that same evening. On top of Agatha All Along, Plaza starred in the coming-of-age comedy My Old Ass and Francis Ford Coppola’s epic Megalopolis; she attended all three premieres during this week-and-a-half period and, no, they were not on the same coast.

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Naturally, Plaza is calling from her couch. “Baby, I always wanted to be in movies,” she says in that zany Transatlantic affect she carries in her back pocket. “That was always the plan. But a Marvel TV show? I never thought I would do that. Fashion campaigns? I never thought that anyone would want me to do that. I mean, it blows my mind that I’m in a Coppola movie.” But scratching off bucket list items isn’t done for Plaza. As we chat, she’s already moving into her next project, the ultimate dream collaboration for anyone with a flair for morbid, campy humor: a John Waters movie.

“The Puerto Rican women in my family are sarcastic and funny. But for years and years and years, the stereotypes of Latina actresses or characters have been so one-dimensional. Like there’s one kind of Latina woman, which is just not true.”

—Aubrey Plaza for V151 Winter 2024 Issue

“I can’t think of anything more crazy for myself than for that to happen,” Plaza says. “He’s in his mid-70s, but I actually think his films and his sensibility are so appropriate for this younger generation right now. I feel like they need a John Waters.” Totally, Gen Z needs another John Waters movie. But, we also need someone familiar to marry that irreverent old school humor with a more empathetic yet unserious je ne sais quoi. The perfect place for a witch of Plaza’s caliber to wield her powers.

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This story appears in the pages of V151: now available for purchase!Photography Blair Getz Mezibov