Aubrey Plaza

The Myth of the Apathetic Intern

Aubrey Plaza was born in Wilmington in 1984. Her father worked as a financial advisor and her mother was a nurse. She studied film at the Tisch School of the Arts in New York, where she began honing her craft at the Upright Citizens Brigade doing improv comedy.

In 2004, she suffered a stroke that caused temporary aphasia.

That scare didn't slow her work pace. In 2009, she landed the role of April Ludgate in the series Parks and Recreation. The writers created the character specifically for her after an audition where Plaza left the casting directors completely thrown off by her defensive and odd attitude.

But she didn't want to be trapped in the mold of the quirky office girl. In 2012, she starred in Safety Not Guaranteed. It was her first leading role in independent film, and critics began to see that there was more behind her disdainful gaze.

Total Control From Production

Plaza founded her own production company, Evil Hag Productions, in 2016. She wanted to choose her own scripts and stop waiting for calls from Los Angeles casting agents. That's how Ingrid Goes West came about in 2017, a dark satire about social media obsession that she produced and starred in.

And the gamble paid off.

In 2020, she shot Black Bear in an isolated cabin in the Adirondack Mountains. It's a two-act film in which she plays a filmmaker in crisis. The shoot was grueling because Plaza filmed scenes of extreme emotional intensity during twelve-hour days in the rain.

Her style isn't built on deadpan humor alone. In 2022, she played Harper Spiller in the second season of The White Lotus. For this role, she earned her first Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. The series was filmed entirely in Sicily over several months that year.

The Leap to Big Budgets

In 2024, she joined the cast of Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola's personal project that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Plaza plays Wow Platinum, a financial journalist with ambitions for power. For this role, she had to shoot complex scenes alongside Adam Driver and Giancarlo Esposito.

That same year, she entered the franchise universe with the series Agatha All Along for the Disney+ streaming platform.

Her career moved decisively beyond the fringes of television comedy and into the big-money league.

In 2025, her participation in John Waters's new movie titled Liarmouth was confirmed. The estimated preproduction budget for this film exceeded an initial five million dollars, spent on locations and costume design alone.

Her contract for the Coppola film included specific clauses about availability for rehearsals in Atlanta.