In fact, Plaza has stayed so prolific that her three newest projects have all come out within days of each other. The first was the charming time-travel comedy “My Old Ass” on Sept. 13, followed by the Marvel series “Agatha All Along,” in which she plays the romantic antagonist to Kathryn Hahn’s “WandaVision” witch. Friday saw the long-awaited release of “Megalopolis,” from the 85-year-old director Francis Ford Coppola (“The Godfather”), which features Plaza in a grabby role unlike anything she’s played before.

You could call this an Aubrey Autumn if the 40-year-old actress weren’t so abashed about the synchronicity. “It’s almost embarrassing,” she said. “People are like, ‘God, you work so much!’” Plaza has considered cutting back on acting gigs while she writes a new film that she hopes will be her directorial debut. Then again, she plans to star in that movie, too.
“I’m never going to not be hungry to find parts,” she said. “It’s almost a survival thing for me where I need to act or I’ll just die.”

There’s humor to be found in the gulf between the grandness of Plaza’s statements and the flatness of her voice. Still, you shouldn’t mistake all she says for sarcasm. “I don’t take anything lightly,” she told me, a mandate she extends to her work. “Even if it’s a comedy, I treat it the same: I’m very intense about whatever I’m doing.”

The longer we brunched, the more I agreed. Maybe the popular perception of Plaza has been wrong all along: What so many people describe as her lack of affect may instead be a barely concealed fervor, a tremor beneath the surface threatening to become the Big One if she ever dares to let it emerge.

Hahn, who has known Plaza since guest-starring on “Parks and Recreation,” said the two bonded over their obsession for the late actress Gena Rowlands. She described Plaza as “hungry” for all things Hollywood.

“She’s a student and an old-school, cigar-smoking film director who master-classes the occasional film theory class,” Hahn wrote in an email. “She loves old-school stardom. I remember her saying, ‘It’s all for the memoir.’”

Perhaps that gives Plaza permission to push things just a little further than most would. The actress had shown up to our interview on crutches, having torn her A.C.L. a few weeks prior during the W.N.B.A.’s all-star weekend in Phoenix. Plaza injured herself playing a casual game of knockout with friends — “It’s a shooting game, it’s not even aggressive” — which inspired no end of jokes as she received medical attention backstage.

“All the W.N.B.A. players kept popping in the room like, ‘What is wrong with you? Who gets hurt playing knockout?’” she said. Even when blowing off steam, Plaza just can’t help herself from going hard.

WITH A NAME as outsized as Wow Platinum, it’s clear that Plaza’s character in “Megalopolis” is not meant to be played like a shrinking violet: Indeed, Plaza strides into every one of her scenes as though it’s a bounty to be won. Her Wow is a power-hungry financial reporter who loves the visionary architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) but tires of being merely his mistress. Determined to rule as one half of a power couple, she sets her ruthless sights on the banking magnate Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), the only man rich enough to finance her ex’s ambitious architectural innovations.

Though “Megalopolis” has earned wildly mixed reviews, most critics agree that Plaza gives its most successful performance, either because she has the clearest understanding of the movie she’s in or because she’s able to bend its tone toward her through sheer bravado. (Or both.) Nevertheless, she was surprised to be offered the role of Wow in the first place.

“Even the physical description of her, I don’t think I’m the person you would think of right away,” she said. (For an earlier incarnation of “Megalopolis,” Coppola had reportedly pursued Cate Blanchett for the part.) But Plaza was willing to do whatever was needed for the movie, even bleaching her hair platinum blond for the first time. She felt inspired by the likes of Faye Dunaway in “Network” and Nicole Kidman in “To Die For,” brash and fearless women who seek power in male-dominated worlds.

In the works for decades, “Megalopolis” finally began shooting in November 2022 after Coppola sold a share of his wine empire and self-financed the film to the tune of $120 million. By all accounts, it was no ordinary production. A report in The Guardian called the shoot a “train wreck” and quoted anonymous sources who said that while filming a nightclub scene, Coppola tried to kiss some of the female extras. (He told The Times he was “not touchy-feely” and “too shy” to have done so; he later told Rolling Stone he had kissed some on the cheek, though they were “young women I knew.”)

Asked about the allegation, Plaza demurred. “I wasn’t on set that day, so I don’t really know what went down there,” she said. But she admitted that the production was “not for the faint of heart,” with Coppola prizing spontaneity and directing a cast full of strong personalities who were all used to leading their own movies.

“It was madness working on that film,” Plaza said. “My mentality every day was ‘every man for himself; only the strong survive here.’”

Any given scene felt up for grabs since Coppola was as liable to tell Plaza, “In the next take, you’re a spider,” as he was to pursue an idea contributed by his barista. “There were days that I would go to set thinking we’re about to start shooting,” she said, “and instead, Francis would go, ‘I’d like to play a game.’” Recalling that, she imitated a record scratch.

Though Plaza felt inspired by Coppola’s unconventional approach, she also knew that if she couldn’t stake her claim on this constantly shifting material, she was in danger of being blown off the screen. Between takes, she stayed in character, hoping to channel Wow’s strength as a survival mechanism.

“Even in the car on the way to that set, I would transform into Wow,” she said. “I would go, ‘OK, I’m terrified right now, I’m having a nervous breakdown as myself, but Wow’s not. She can handle anything.’ And I would switch like a lightbulb: ‘It’s Wow time.’”
Plaza said the actors who were willing to improvise ultimately proved most adept at navigating the production. “If you weren’t, then you’d get eaten alive,” she said. “You had to be confident and have a plan because it’s not all on the page.”

And even the pages could come from anywhere. When she met Voight for the first time before their camera test, the actor handed her a stack of scenes he had handwritten in his hotel room: “I’m thinking in my head, ‘Oh God, he’s writing scenes for a Coppola movie, he must be out of his mind.’” But Voight encouraged her to do the same, suggesting that what she came up with might make the movie.

That’s how Plaza helped craft the most memorable scene in “Megalopolis,” in which Wow, newly married to Crassus, clambers onto a desk and orders the man’s son (Shia LaBeouf) to orally pleasure her as he calls her Auntie Wow. Coppola’s initial idea for the sequence wasn’t fully formed, so Plaza and LaBeouf took matters into their own hands, writing a scene for their director that thrums with demented comic verve.

In the end, “Megalopolis” offered an experience as intense as anything she could ever muster, Plaza said: “It’s taken a long time, but I finally found what I’ve been looking for, which is having Francis direct me in a way that was truly inspiring and not about end result.” When you’re working with Coppola, anything and everything is on the table.
“On the desk, in fact,” she added.

AT THE END of June, Plaza, who is married to the writer-director Jeff Baena, celebrated turning 40 with a birthday party that paid tribute to her longtime idol, Judy Garland. A drag queen performed “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Dinner menus were modeled on the flier for Garland’s Carnegie Hall show, only with Plaza’s face in her place. And as a final surprise, members of the Los Angeles Gay Men’s Chorus came out of Plaza’s closet — “no pun intended,” she said — to serenade her with a round of songs including “Happy Birthday.”

The idea of turning 40 is something Plaza recently explored in “My Old Ass,” in which she plays Elliott, a woman just shy of that pivotal age who pierces the veil of time and manages to connect with her teenage self. Assuming Plaza were able to do that, too, would she have achieved all the things by 40 that her younger self expected?

“Professionally, maybe, but I don’t know,” she said. “Nothing’s ever good enough for me. I’m so hard on myself.”

She has kept as busy as ever, having recently segued from an intense stint in “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” Off Broadway all the way to Bulgaria, where she shot an R-rated Ryan Reynolds comedy called “Animal Friends,” and then to Albuquerque, where she starred in Ethan Coen’s forthcoming crime drama “Honey Don’t.” But there are still two things she has always dreamed of doing. One is that directorial debut, but the other is even more tantalizing: She really, really wants to host the Oscars.

Though many stars decline the high-risk gig, Plaza is openly pursuing it. After a pair of witty hosting stints at the Independent Spirit Awards, Plaza feels ready to emcee Hollywood’s biggest night. At a recent dinner party with John Waters, she met some higher-ups at the academy and pitched herself for the position, arguing that the host needs to be someone who cares deeply about movies.

“It drives me crazy when you see a bad Oscars show because this is the big event, this is all the most brilliant people that make films for the whole world, so can we not have them put on the best show?” she said. “I’m putting it out there, I’m manifesting it, because I bleed for movies. I care.”

It’s at that point that we were interrupted by the earthquake, possibly the only thing brunch could offer that would match Plaza’s intensity. In the quake’s aftermath, she briefly lost her nerve. “Screw the Oscars, I’m trying to survive,” she joked, using much more colorful language. “Check please!”

When I excused myself to use the restroom, she appeared alarmed. “Don’t leave me for too long,” she said. But I shouldn’t have underestimated her. Plaza made peace with the peril during the few minutes I was gone, murmuring a secret message into my recorder that I wouldn’t hear until much later.

“This is the part where you leave me alone with the recorder and I tell you my deepest, most inner thoughts,” she said, “which is I want this earthquake to take me now. I’m ready. Goodbye.”