Sunday Times Style — […] In Plaza’s new film, Ingrid Goes West, we see our global Insta addiction taken to its silliest, wildest, scariest extremes. Ingrid (an excellent Plaza) is a loner, languishing somewhere in America’s Midwest. Scrolling through the ’gram one night, she comes across the account of Taylor Sloane, your quintessential hipster Californian. Taylor (Elizabeth Olsen) is an Insta-type we know all too well: vintage finds, avocado toasts, gorgeous boyfriend, artful book choices and a slew of #blessed. Whereupon Ingrid does the completely logical thing: she moves out west and stalks Taylor, copies her and infiltrates her life.
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“It does succeed in capturing a very specific time that we’re in,” Plaza says with typical understatement. The actress, 33, has made a career out of various deadpan stylings, although she is now evolving into more nuanced, dramatic roles. As April Ludgate in Amy Poehler’s adorable sitcom Parks and Recreation, she was the sullen, perma-scowling intern whose furious looks to camera managed more than a thousand gags. Add to that star turns in the likes of Funny People or Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and she’s become one of America’s brightest young stars, in her own dark way. Although she refuses to reduce Ingrid to some weird comic caricature.
“I think everyone can relate to where Ingrid is coming from,” she reasons, sitting in the foyer of the London hotel where she is staying. Dressed down in a blue chunky jumper, blue jeans and red Converse, she is inevitably smaller than you’d imagine, but more beautiful too, with almond eyes and a slightly wonky mouth. When she talks, it all goes a bit Picasso: the eyes and the mouth do all the work, everything else quite still. Does she mean we can relate to Ingrid’s loneliness?
“Yeah. Just wanting to be like someone else, or wanting someone to like you so badly, or being obsessed with someone else’s identity. Just focusing all of your energy on somebody else’s life online — I think that’s the thing that people do. They go down these rabbit holes on Instagram or Facebook, and you spend a lot of energy looking at people’s lives, and you can’t help but compare yourself to them, and it just feeds this weird toxic part of your brain.”
Photoshoots & Portraits > 2017 > Session 47 [+5]