I’m really bad at picking my favorite anything,” says Aubrey Plaza, the 25- year-old actress who appears on NBC’s primetime gem Parks and Recreation. “I don’t really have a favorite movie or band or color or candy bar or parent. I’m pretty inconsistent in all areas of my life. Maybe that’s why I’m an actor?” Whatever the reason, Plaza should keep at it. In addition to her recurring role on Parks, the banged brunette recently appeared in Judd Apatow’s Funny People and will soon be seen in the Michael Cera vehicle, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. “Oh my God!” she says, “I totally forgot to put the song I was named after on this list! It’s called ‘Aubrey’ and it’s by Bread, this weird ’70s band. It’s actually really depressing when you listen to it. Can we add an eleventh song to this thing? Either way, here are 10 songs that have nothing to do with each other.”

Judy Garland’s “Do It Again.” I have been obsessed with Judy Garland since I was 12. I don’t know why. It’s really weird how I got into her. I had to do this project in seventh grade on decades. My decade was the ’60s, I think, the decade she died. Some people said that she killed herself and some people said that it was an accidental overdose. For some reason, I got all Nancy Drew-obsessed with trying to figure out how she died. Now I know everything about her, in a creepy way. My room was covered with pictures of her.

Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Crimson & Clover.” I enjoy love songs about people who hardly know each other. The lyrics are something like, “I don’t hardly know her, but I think I could love her.”

Hap Palmer’s “I Can Put My Clothes On By Myself.” This is from an album that Amy [Poehler, her co-star in Parks and Recreation] and I found while shooting on location at a preschool. We were stealing things, like we usually do, and started listening to all these weird children’s albums. Hap Palmer makes kids songs sound like cool ’70s rock songs. I listen to them while I clean.

Coconut Records’ “I Am Young.” This song is in Funny People. Jason Schwartzman did a lot of the music for the movie [under the name Coconut Records]. That movie kind of changed my life, so I felt like I needed to add a song from it. Before Funny People, I was waiting tables. Literally, the week before I got cast, I was broke and didn’t have a job. I still feel like, any day now, I’ll have to go back to New York and start taking people’s orders again.

The Spring Standards’ “In The Underground.” I grew up with these guys in Delaware and now they are a real fucking band. I don’t know what it is about Delaware, but there are a lot of talented people out there. I think there’s some
strange radioactive stuff in the water. You should buy this album. The Beatles’

“I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” I went on a road trip last August, from Chicago to L.A. We stopped at a Starbucks to get pumpkin lattes, and ended up buying all of these Beatles albums. I don’t know why, but it’s more fun to listen to something that you bought at Starbucks. We also listened to this Stephen King book on tape that was read by Anne Heche for nine hours.

Judy Garland’s “The Man That Got Away.” This song is in A Star is Born, one of my favorite movies of all time. I’ve watched everything with Judy in it. I’ve read so many books about her. She’s just one of those famous people who made me want to act.

Big Pun’s “100%.” I’m half Puerto Rican. This song makes me want to be full Puerto Rican.

Ben Folds Five’s “Don’t Change Your Plans.” This reminds me of when I was in Spain on a high school field trip. It was all juniors and seniors, but I went as a freshman. I didn’t have any friends, so ended up getting lost on my own, looking at old castles and listening to Ben Folds’ voice.

Aqua’s “Barbie Girl.” I think I hate this song.

From BlackBook

Actress, Delaware native Aubrey Plaza garden attention, television roles

During her two weeks back home in Delaware during the holidays, it didn’t take long for 2009′s success to catch up with actress/comedienne Aubrey Plaza.

While taking a break from shopping for Christmas presents at the Concord Mall, the co-star of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” met a woman in the ladies’ room.

“A woman said to me, ‘You really look like that girl from ‘Parks and Recreation’ and I said, ‘Oh yeah, I think I am. I am that girl,’ ” Plaza said during a phone interview recently. “She was asking, ‘What are you doing in the Concord Mall bathroom?’ ”

Plaza, a Wilmington native, isn’t being recognized only because of her role as the disinterested intern on the prime-time sitcom, but also for her role as Seth Rogen’s girlfriend in last summer’s film “Funny People,” directed by Judd Apatow (“Knocked Up,” “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.”)

In it, Plaza’s character is also from Delaware, leading to the memorable First State-themed exchange between the two:

ROGEN: So where are you from originally? You just moved here, right?

PLAZA: Delaware.

ROGEN: Delaware! Our first state in the union.

PLAZA: Yes, it is.

ROGEN: That’s great. No sales tax in Delaware.

PLAZA: Yeah, there’s not. That’s weird that you know so much about Delaware. (What) are you … Joe Biden?

ROGEN: He’s from Delaware. See, I knew that!
After high school, off to New York

So how did Plaza, who has been acting since the age of 10, go from productions at Wilmington Drama League and Delaware Theatre Company to a Hollywood career that also includes an upcoming summer comedy with Michael Cera called “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” directed by Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz”)?

With the support of her parents, David, a financial adviser, and Bernadette, an attorney, Plaza decided to move to New York after graduating from Ursuline Academy in 2002 to study at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, from which she graduated in 2005.

“She’s one of these rare individuals who just knew what she wanted to do at a very young age. She had the talent and the drive,” David Plaza said. “It’s amazing how quickly things have come together for her.”

In addition to her studies, Plaza performed both stand-up and improv comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York. It counts Amy Poehler, Plaza’s costar on “Parks and Recreation” and a “Saturday Night Live” alum, as a founding member.

It’s appropriate that Plaza landed on a show with Poehler, since Plaza credits “Saturday Night Live” for her love of comedy and acting.

A fan of the show since middle school, Plaza also used humor as a teen and admits she could have been described as a class clown.

Kay Gaglione, who taught Plaza American history in seventh grade, said she remembers walking home from school one day followed by Plaza, hidden in a large cardboard box. Gaglione would walk a few steps and so would Plaza. When Gaglione would stop and turn around, the box would stop and drop to the sidewalk.

“She was very, very funny. Even then, she was just a riot,” remembers Gaglione, who is now the middle-school coordinator for Ursuline.

“I never thought I could turn that into something until after I started watching ‘SNL’ and getting into other TV and film comedies,” Plaza said. “I was making people laugh in my everyday life and these people were getting paid for it, so I figured I should learn how to do that.”

From Delmarva Now

The rising comedic star talks about this new DVD, Parks and Recreation, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and more.

Around this time last year, I was reading up on Judd Apatow’s new directorial effort, Funny People, since I was going to be visiting the set of the film. Among the huge names in the film was a newcomer named Aubrey Plaza, and, if the newcomers in Apatow’s previous two films were any indication (See: Jonah Hill and Charlene Yi), I figured this young comedienne was surely on a pretty damn good path. Of course, that was before we knew her as the hilariously deadpan April Ludgate on the wonderful NBC comedy Parks and Recreation and the actress also has the highly-anticipated Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World coming up as well. I recently had the chance to speak with Aubrey Plaza for the new Funny People DVD and Blu-ray release on November 24, and here’s what she had to say.

I was wondering how you first heard about Judd’s script and how the whole casting process went about for you? Who was already attached when you first heard about the film?

Aubrey Plaza: Well, I didn’t know much. I didn’t read the script, I didn’t really know anything about it. I knew it was Judd’s movie and that Seth (Rogen) and Adam (Sandler) were going to be in it. That’s kind of all I knew. Allison Jones cast the movie and I had met her, just kind of generally, a couple of months before. She told me then that she was on this movie, but she wasn’t going to tell me what it was until later. I knew something was going on, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I was in New York at that point and she had me put myself on tape. I just did the scenes and improvised with my friends and sent it to L.A., just hoping that they would actually watch it. I heard a couple of months later that Judd did watch it and he really liked it, so I came out to L.A. to have a callback and I read with Seth, in front of Judd. That was terrifying but it went really well. I hadn’t heard anything for a month after that and I knew I did well but I wasn’t really sure what the hold-up was, what they were looking for. I found out that they had really wanted to cast a stand-up comedian. At the time I wasn’t doing stand-up, so I kind of took it upon myself to start doing stand-up and taping myself and sending it to him. So that’s kind of how I got the part. It was a three-step process, I guess, where the final step was, I think, the most important, sending bits of me actually doing jokes and having him actually see me on stage with a mic, in front of an audience, that it was possible that I could pull it off, to be this young, stand-up comedian.

You have an improv background, I believe. What was it like getting into stand-up mode, as opposed to your improv background?

Aubrey Plaza: It was really tough. Improv is so different, it’s such a collaborative thing, you’re working with other people, nothing is planned and it’s kind of this community mentality, whereas stand-up, you’re alone and it was really hard. Having to stand in front of an audience and have it be your job to make them laugh, you can’t really look to anyone but yourself. It’s what you wrote, what you said and how you said it, so it’s kind of terrifying, but I liked it. When it goes well, it’s the best feeling in the world. When it doesn’t go well, it’s the worst feeling, but once you get into the rhythm of it, I think it’s really fun. Also it’s a good exercise for writing, for me, using my brain in that different way.

I know the DVD and the Blu-ray that are coming out are both just packed with extras, with a lot of bonus stand-up material. Is there a lot of these unseen bits from your performances on here then?

Aubrey Plaza: Yeah, definitely. The first time I ever did stand-up was in Queens and it was the first time I had done it and I taped it and sent it to him. After I got the part, a couple of weeks later, he brought me out to L.A. and I immediately started doing shows with the rest of the cast, having never done it before. So I went from zero to performing with Adam Sandler in less than a month. It was really a crazy interaction to stand-up, but they had camera crews follow me to every show and tape every single show that I did. I went up multiple times a week and I did The Laugh Factory, all these open mic’s and they sent camera crews everywhere. There’s a ton of shows on the DVD, a lot of me bombing on stage, which I’m sure will be fun for me to watch (Laughs). So yeah, a lot of failure, but it will give you a good idea of how I got to where I am now.

(more…)

Now that “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” has wrapped principal photography, the movie’s many cast members are starting to talk about their work on the Edgar Wright-directed comic book adaptation. Today, actress Aubrey Plaza is getting in on that action.

Plaza plays Julie Powers in “Scott Pilgrim,” the occasional girlfriend of Scott’s band mate Stephen Stills. The actress spoke with Making Of about the film’s “perfectly” weird faithfulness to the Bryan Lee O’Malley-created graphic novels.

“There’s a lot of weird, really perfectly casted people,” said Plaza. “Alison Pill really looks like Kim Pine, Michael [Cera] really looks like Scott Pilgrim in a weird way, so everybody kind of weirdly looks like their character. You almost feel like it was meant to be.”

The actress is perhaps best known for her role in last summer’s “Funny People,” and while Plaza had plenty of comedy to wade through in “Scott Pilgrim,” she admitted that there was an entirely new element for her in the movie’s action component.

“It’s kind of a crazy movie because it’s a comedy, but it’s also an action film,” she said. “It was a different way of working—a lot more technical, not a lot of improv. There’s no room to improvise when there’s a blue screen and camera craning at these weird times. You have to really be hitting all of the beats and everything. So it was a learning experience for me, because I’m used to kind of just saying whatever I want.”

And who says learning can’t be fun? Certainly not Plaza, who had nothing but great things to say about filming the comic book movie.

“It was really fun,” she said. “Edgar is awesome. He’s really great. Everyone in the cast was really great—they’re all a combination of really funny but also really great actors.”

From MTV

STANDING OUT in a movie with Seth Rogen can’t be easy, but that’s just what New York transplant Aubrey Plaza has done in the new Judd Apatow comedy “Funny People.”

“By the way,” Post film critic Kyle Smith wrote in his review, “remember this actress’ name: Aubrey Plaza. She’s awesome.”

That name, as the 25-year-old recently explained, is an unusual combination: Plaza, she says, is “Puerto Rican Spanish,” while Aubrey was inspired by the title of a song by band Bread in the ’70s.

A native of Delaware, Plaza has been making her comic mark since starting college at New York University — a school she chose partly for its proximity to famed comedy group The Upright Citizens Brigade.

A former intern on “Saturday Night Live,” she’s worked on two shows featuring female alums of the late night show, doing a quick turn as an NBC page on Tina Fey’s “30 Rock,” and more recently enjoying a regular part on Amy Poehler’s “Parks and Recreation.”

Named a “Hot Comic” by Rolling Stone and one of “10 Comics to Watch” by Variety, Plaza is maintaining momentum with an indie movie, “Mystery Team,” out this year. Also in the can is a project with a name as memorable as her own: “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World,” a comedy with Michael Cera set for release next year.

“Funny People” is in theaters now.

From the New York Post