It’s a Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles, and Aubrey Plaza is talking over brunch about a recent milestone: turning 30. April Ludgate, her alter ego on NBC’s Parks and Recreation, couldn’t have put it better – “I hate it,” says Plaza. “If anyone tries to tell me it’s not a big deal, I’m like, ‘Fuck off’. The last thing I want to do is be 30.”
Since her big break in 2006 – a bit-part on the first season of 30 Rock – Plaza has been known for her characterisations of eccentric twenty-something girls, from Seth Rogen’s love interest in Judd Apatow’s Funny People to starring roles in indie films Safety Not Guaranteed and The To Do List. And the ball has kept rolling. “I know, it’s a stupid attitude,” she continues. “But I would like for things to slow down a bit. It just feels like it’s happening too fast.”
But Plaza has always been tenacious. A decade ago, when she was attending film school at New York University, she overcame a stroke. “It just happened,” she says. “I was talking, and I looked down at my arm – it was like my arm wasn’t attached to my body. I couldn’t feel anything on my right side. I blacked out or something for a minute, and then when I was conscious again, I couldn’t speak.”
The blood clot was in the language centre of her brain, and caused her to experience a two-day bout of expressive aphasia, where she essentially forgot how to talk. “I could understand what people were saying to me, but I couldn’t respond to anyone,” she says. Though she recovered fully, the experience put certain things into perspective. But it’s not what kickstarted her ambition to be an actor. “I’ve always been pretty obsessive about going after what I want,” she says. “When I was in high school, I was president of everything. I was obsessed with extracurricular activities, clubs, sports, plays.”
Her boyfriend of four years, Jeff Baena, who co-wrote I Heart the Huckabees with David O Russell, has directed her latest project: Life After Beth, a horror-comedy-drama in which Plaza plays a lustful zombie who reunites with her still-living boyfriend. While some might find working under their significant other unappealing, Plaza was all for Baena being her boss – sex scenes included. “I like it. I like it when people tell me what to do. I find that very attractive. I thought [it would be] weird, but his attitude was funny: ‘You’re going to do this no matter what, I might as well be supervising,’” she says. “There’s something kind of fun about making out with someone else in front of your boyfriend. It’s freeing.”
At the same time, she hasn’t wholly come to terms with the fact that, despite being known for playing “the deadpan, sarcastic, eye-rolling weirdo”, her fans consider her pretty, well, hot: “I don’t reject the idea – if you told the 12-year-old version of me that I’d be hot, I’d be like, ‘No fuckin’ way’. It’s, like, cool for awkward middle-school girls everywhere to know things can change.” But does she ever see herself being on the cover of a men’s mag? “Never say never, but I don’t know if I can do anything where it’s literally just, like: ‘Please masturbate to me.’”
Filming on the seventh and final season of Parks and Recreation is under way, and Plaza will be done by Christmas. “I’m more sad than excited,” she says. “It’s just been such a huge part of my life. When Rashida [Jones] and Rob Lowe left last year, it was kind of the beginning of the end. The last day she was on set, it was so sad, and we didn’t know what to do. So we all weirdly went on top of Amy [Poehler]’s trailer, on the roof, and sat there in a circle and drank wine and stopped to just look at each other. We have been together for six years. There’s no forced anything, we just 100% love each other.”
One of her closest cast members is Poehler, whom she considers a mentor as well as one of her best friends. “She teaches me things every day, and the way that she has aged in her career and her life is exactly how I’d want to do it,” she says. “She’s taught me how important female relationships are. That men come and go – husbands, boyfriends, whatever – but female relationships last for ever, and it’s important to cultivate them and be precious about them. It’s sisters before misters.”
Plaza, according to her boyfriend, has a habit of dressing like she’s in uniform but those school-girl vestiges are complemented by details of a sophisticated woman, albeit one who’s vacillating over whether or not she really wants to grow up – scuffed-up denim flats, but by French designer Isabel Marant; an Yves Saint Laurent patent leather purse, and a bikini underneath for the pool party she’s off to.
As for what comes next in her career, Plaza is undecided. “I have no idea. I have no plans. Nothing,” she says. “I don’t want to jump on another TV show right away. I need to float around a little bit. They say your body chemistry changes every seven years. And, weirdly, it’s like my career chemistry is going to change.”
Life After Beth is released in the UK on 3 October
