Archive for the 'Interviews' Category

Aubrey Plaza drove ‘more dangerously’ than the stunt driver in ‘Emily the Criminal’

If Aubrey Plaza had a credit card with an unlimited spending amount, she would buy “the entire Criterion Collection on Blu-ray,” “a region two DVD player” and “Stromboli, that volcanic island off the coast of Sicily.” Her co-star Theo Rossi would add more donkeys and goats to his ranch.

The duo star in director John Patton Ford’s crime film “Emily the Criminal” (in theaters Friday), which follows Plaza’s character Emily, an artist riddled with crushing student debt that she’s unable to pay because of her criminal record. To consolidate the burden, Emily takes up credit card fraud schemes, becoming a “dummy shopper” who buys merchandise with stolen credit cards. Youcef (Rossi), the ringleader of the operation, in turn sells the illegally purchased items.

Plaza says the hardship of finding ways to pay off student debt is “something that an entire generation of young people can relate to coming out of this system that is so broken.”

“The unpaid internship thing is just preposterous when you think about it. I mean, people have to eat,” Rossi says.

“Emily” is filled to the brim with tense action sequences, including scenes where Plaza, 38, tasers people. Plaza, who didn’t work with a real taser on the set, said she used a toy taser she found in a cereal box.

“Second time I’ve tasered someone on film. That’s kind of becoming my thing,” Plaza says.

The film features a car chase scene where Emily narrowly escapes a car dealer who attacks her afterdiscovering she had fraudulently purchased a vehicle. Plaza says she did a lot of her own driving in the movie and acknowledges she drove “more dangerously than the stunt driver.”

“The stunt coordinator told me to take it easy, to tone it down multiple times,” Plaza says. “But you only got a couple chances. You’ve got to make it real.”

Emily and Youcef develop an onscreen romantic relationship while taking “chances on each other,” Rossi, 47, says.

“We as actors, artists, people, humans take chances on each other,” Rossi says. “I think that that really resonates throughout the film.” Rossi says.

Similarly, the co-stars developed a strong behind-the-scenes bond.

“Theo comforts me because he tells me about things like time is not real and things about reality that I’ve never heard of,” Plaza says.

Plaza is having a busy August beyond “Emily.” The “Parks and Recreation” star will make an appearance in “Spin Me Round,” a romantic comedy thriller co-written and directed by her husband, Jeff Baena, to be released Aug. 19 (in theaters, on demand and AMC+).

Plaza will also voice Laura Feinberg in FX’s animated horror-comedy show “Little Demon,” premiering Aug. 25. Feinberg becomes the mother of the anti-Christ when she’s impregnated by Satan (voiced by Danny DeVito), giving birth to daughter Chrissy (voiced by Lucy DeVito).

Plaza says playing the mother of the anti-Christ is something “that she’s been meaning to do.”

“Having the anti-Christ as my daughter is just one of the most fulfilling things that’s ever happened to me,” Plaza says.

Source: USA Today

Aubrey Plaza on why her new thriller “Emily the Criminal” felt like pulling off a scam

If Aubrey Plaza’s Hollywood career doesn’t work out, she might have a future in credit-card fraud.

Thanks to her new film Emily the Criminal (now in theaters), Plaza says she got really good with an embossing machine. “I know how to work that thing,” she tells EW, adding with her trademark deadpan wit, “so if my career doesn’t pan out, I know how to make a fake credit card, and I’ll carry that with me until the end.”

In the darkly comic crime feature from debuting writer-director John Patton Ford, Plaza plays Emily, a young woman loaded with student debt (but no degree to show for it), who is locked out of the job market due to a criminal record. Her life changes forever when she gets involved in a credit-card scam as a “dummy shopper,” buying goods with stolen credit cards supplied by charismatic middleman Youcef (Theo Rossi).

The indie, well-received out of Sundance earlier this year, was shot in just 20 days on a tiny budget, and the “down and dirty style,” as Plaza puts it, enabled her to do a lot of the stunts, driving, and fight scenes herself. She says the experience reminded her why she loves making movies. “The entire movie felt like we pulled off a scam,” she says. “All independent films in some ways feel like some kind of heist. Like, ‘Wow. I can’t believe we got away with that.'”

Ahead of Emily’s debut in theaters, EW spoke with Plaza about prepping to play a fraudster, her own bad job experiences, and how she channeled her character’s rage.

Aubrey Plaza is the Low-Key Movie Star for Our Times

Aubrey Plaza is the stealth-weapon actress of our era, one whose name plenty of people know but whose presence somehow feels like a surprise every time she shows up. Even if you were to argue that there’s a typical Plaza character—let’s call her an offbeat, loopy loner with zero patience for idiots—when you look closely, no two Plaza performances are alike. One minute she’s a temptress with sultry, hungry eyes; the next she’s a smart-ass Kewpie doll, but not the overly cute kind—more like one you’d win at a Nightmare Alley-style carnival. With her dry-martini timing, she’d have fit in perfectly with the classic comedic actresses of the 1930s like Myrna Loy and Irene Dunne, though you also wonder what she might have done with a ‘70s-era Robert Altman role—she even looks a little like Shelley Duvall, and she’s capable of the same wistful vulnerability. In a world where everyone seems to be clamoring desperately for attention, Plaza is the ultimate low-key movie star.

Aubrey Plaza Is a Millennial Dirty Harry in “Emily the Criminal”

Aubrey Plaza’s new film, Emily the Criminal, is the latest reason to take the actor best known for her sly humor seriously. As the action thriller’s titular character—an aspiring artist living in Los Angeles, who’s saddled with $70,000 in student-loan debt and an aggravated-assault conviction that prevents her from landing a decent-paying job—Plaza is riveting. Emily’s fortunes change when her dead-end food-delivery gig leads to work with small-time scammers who use stolen credit card numbers to buy high-end TVs and cars resold on the black market.

“It was very different from anything I’ve ever done,” Plaza says about the “unapologetic” and timely story of a woman “so beaten down by this broken capitalistic system that she’s lost.”

An emboldened Emily taps into her simmering rage and develops a steeliness—mace and a taser help—to take on increasingly complicated criminal endeavors, realizing that she’s got an affinity for the work.

“The story is about Emily coming into herself and getting her power back, and kind of becoming a more fully realized person,” Plaza tells V.F. Indeed, first-time feature film writer-director John Patton Ford—whose own student-loan debt and food-delivery job helped inspire the story—thought of the reinvigorated woman as a millennial Dirty Harry. (Though Emily doesn’t have a catchphrase like Clint Eastwood’s “Go ahead, make my day”—“I wish she had a phrase,” Plaza says—she does have a satisfying face-off with Gina Gershon as a prospective employer.)
“What’s unique about this movie is that when it starts, she’s already well on her way to getting to her tipping point,” Plaza says. (The reason for Emily’s assault conviction is explained late in the film.) “We get to see these kind of micro decisions that [she makes] lead her on this other path. Yes, she does become a criminal. But I think it is more about her discovering who she is, and what she really wants, and what she’s willing to do to get it.” Including a questionable relationship with fellow thief Youcef (Theo Rossi). “I always want a love story,” she says, chuckling. “Even if it’s not so obvious.”

Aubrey Plaza on Why Low Budget of ‘Emily the Criminal’ Was Critical to Film

Aubrey Plaza wanted more money and time to produce her student-debt thriller Emily the Criminal, but the lack of both ended up serving the final vision.

“We shot the film in 21 days, which is a ridiculous amount of time to shoot a movie,” she tells Newsweek. “It’s no time at all. We were moving really fast, so there was an adrenaline just to the nature of how we shot it and it kind of worked.”

Asked whether that was by design, she let out an emphatic “No!” Plaza, who stars as the title character and also produces, said, “When I first read the script, I thought, OK, I want to do this film but I want to have a really comfortable budget because I want to do it right and I don’t want to kill myself in the process. I want to have time. Time equals money.”

And money equals opportunity. The plot of Emily reflects that: It centers on a woman so desperate to pay off her student loans and get her life on track that she turns to an increasingly dangerous life of crime.

“I saw the potential of making an entertaining and beautiful movie but also putting something out there that’s relevant to the state of society and America today,” she said about the project, which premiered at the Sunday Film Festival in January. “It feels like it’s hitting a nerve. I think that’s what you always dream of when you make an independent film.”

The Parks and Recreation star added, “That’s also what is in some ways sad. I read the script four or five years ago—pre pandemic times—and everything has changed in the world and this country since then. But these issues of this generation, graduating from school and being saddled with so much debt and student loans. It almost feels more relevant now. It’s aged very well.”

In the end, Plaza—who also just wrapped filming on White Lotus season 2 and has the upcoming film Spin Me Round, directed by her husband, Jeff Baena, and starring co-writer Alison Brie—got the film she wanted by not getting what she wanted.

“Finally we linked up with [producer] Tyler Davidson at Low Spark Films, and he didn’t have the numbers that I was looking for but he had the passion and an idea of how to do it on a lower budget. So no, it’s not by design,” she said, “but sometimes when you have constraints and limitations it actually elevates the film.

“There is such an energy behind it. Sometimes when people have too much money or enough money, and they’re comfortable—and you you see a lot of that with the streamer movies these days because their budgets are so bloated—that doesn’t always help the movie in the end, because movies have a soul and the production has a soul and a spirit and it kind of works out the way it should.”

Plaza calls this her most physical role to date—”Ingrid Goes West and Black Bear for me are also thrillers but they’re more psychological and that’s demanding in a different way”—and she loved that.

“One of the appealing things about playing this character was the physicalization of her getting to kind of do something different, sound different and move different. This is a really small movie, but it’s treated almost like an action movie at times. I’m fighting people, there are car-chase sequences, I’m driving all over the place. Also what made it so physically demanding is the pace at which we were shooting….I’m really excited for people to see Emily the Criminal. I can’t wait for it to come out.”

Emily the Criminal is in theaters nationwide on Aug. 12.

Source: Newsweek

Aubrey Plaza on breaking bad with “Emily The Criminal”

Aubrey Plaza swiftly moves her hands around her head as if to put on an imaginary cap. “Just putting my producing hat on,” she playfully remarks during a recent Zoom interview about Emily The Criminal, a modern-day Los Angeles thriller she not only stars in, but also produced.

It’s no secret that the process of financing movies—especially small ones by first-time directors—is tough and risky in the current climate. But from the get-go, Plaza believed in newcomer John Patton Ford and his engaging story of a penniless gig worker who breaks bad to finally make ends meet—a tale based on his real-life experiences. “When you have a director who’s making a film that is so personal to them, there’s a level of passion there that you just can’t get if you’re just doing someone else’s script. I loved how focused he was on performance. We were on the same page from the beginning, so it was a no brainer. I felt like, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s collaborate on this.’”

Plaza recently spoke to The A.V. Club about the challenges—emotional, creative, and logistical—that she and her collaborators endured to bring this low-budget, high-passion project to the screen.

Aubrey Plaza and Theo Rossi on “Emily the Criminal”

Emily (Aubrey Plaza) resorts to credit card scams as she finds herself riddled with student debt and unable to enter the job market due to her criminal record. Her entrance into black-market capitalism is fueled by Youcef (Theo Rossi), whose business partner takes concern in his and Emily’s growing relationship.

What begins as a desperate attempt to repay student loans turns into a thrilling pursuit of love, quick cash, and revenge. Emily the Criminal feels like a spiral where those involved are trying to win back their power in a world that doesn’t care about them. The criminal characters are contextualized in a system so broken and relatable that we root for them. Emily has $70,000 in student debt and the only real job prospect she’s able to get is an unpaid internship without guaranteed work once completed. There are inherent problems with illicit thrills but when faced with customs that lock people out, those thrills seem more justifiable.

“I think there is a lot of commentary in the film,” said Plaza, “I think you’re seeing a character up against a broken system. She’s drowning in debt, student loans specifically, and I think a lot of people today can relate to that…. There are a couple of scenes that really highlight this. There are some job interview scenes in the film where you kind of get to see the nuances of the broken system we’re currently living in, and I think there’s something relatable about how she navigates that and turns on it. The movie is not preachy in any way, but it definitely hits a nerve with something that’s going on right now.”

“On the flip side of that, too, it’s like some people are born or thrust into a life that they never wanted to be in,” added Rossi, relaying the context of his character. “That could be on the crime side… and seeing that when you’re raised in an environment where crime is just kind of what it is, you might be into that… but maybe there was something more,” he continued, noting that his character had dreams outside of crime, “but crime is the reachable thing. It seems so far for people who don’t associate with it, but if it’s something that’s around you, it seems so normalized. So, I think you’re seeing it from both sides, and I don’t think it’s bashing anybody over the head with it, but it’s the themes that are playing out throughout this adventure that they’re on.”

“We’re so excited,” said Plaza, “I’m excited to celebrate this movie. I haven’t even seen it in a theater, so I’m excited to go for the first time.”

“It’s really great on the big screen,” added Rossi, “everybody should go and see it in theaters.”

Rounding out the cast in Emily the Criminal are Bernardo Badillo, Jonathan Avigdori, Kim Yarbrough, Gina Gershon, and more. It’s written and directed by John Patton Ford and set to release theatrically on August 12, 2022.

“We had rehearsed a lot with the bossing ambassador machine,” said Plaza when asked about their preparation for the film. “We had to learn the rules of how the scam worked. That was actually fun because it felt very kind of criminal, and it felt kind of fun to forge fake credit cards, and I feel like that’s a skill I will take with me through my life,” joked Plaza.

Emily the Criminal comes to us from Roadside Attractions and Vertical Entertainment.

Source: Movieweb

“Little Demon” Cast Interview At Comic-Con with CBR

Check out this interview with Aubrey Plaza, Danny DeVito, Lucy DeVito, Kieran Valla, Seth Kirschner, Dan Harmon, Darcy Fowler from FXX’s Little Demon at Comic-Con.

Source: CBR on YouTube

“Spin Me Round” Cast Interview with Collider

Spin Me Round is anything but your average travel comedy. The movie features a slew of curious characters who find themselves in some mighty unusual genre-spanning situations, and who better to pull them all together than writer-director Jeff Baena and his frequent collaborators?

Alison Brie co-wrote the screenplay and also stars in the movie as Amber. She’s a star manager at Tuscan Grove’s Bakersfield, California location. Her hard work and dedication earn her a free trip to Italy to participate in the franchise’s educational immersion program. Soon after arriving, Amber starts to think this could be the romantic getaway of her dreams, but then the situation starts to unravel, leaving her and her fellow Tuscan Grove managers to wonder if they should be questioning the company CEO’s (Alessandro Nivola) intentions.

With Spin Me Round celebrating its world premiere at SXSW 2022, Baena, Brie, Nivola, and co-stars Aubrey Plaza and Molly Shannon all joined us for a virtual interview to cover their experience making this whirlwind of a movie. Check out what they told us about that and the health benefits of peanuts in this interview!

Aubrey Plaza on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” – November 17, 2021

Aubrey Plaza was a guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers to discuss her new book The Legend of the Christmas Witch on November 17, 2021. Check out her interview below!