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Black bear movie4/6/2023 ![]() Enigmatic and seductive, she ensnares her hosts – the married couple Gabe (Christopher Abbott) and Blair (Sarah Gadon) – in a trap of lies and deceit, and the three of them spend a drunken night bickering with increasing hostility. She plays Allison, an indie film-maker who settles into an isolated cabin upstate in search of creative inspiration for her next project. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play Her latest film, the slippery psychosexual thriller Black Bear, was one of her most challenging to date, a physically and emotionally gruelling experience that pushed her to the brink. ![]() ![]() You do something really well and people go, ‘That must be who she is because she’s so believable.’ That’s how I take it.” Plaza’s ease in front of the camera seems effortless to the extent that viewers assume it is, but she is actually very process-driven in her approach to her craft, meticulously preparing for each project alongside her acting coach and enjoying the “nerdy” research of studying other performances to enrich her own. Plaza remains sanguine about the public’s misconception of her, considering it backhanded praise of her work. “Even that sounds like I’m taking it so seriously! It’s a lose-lose situation for me.” I’d rather humiliate myself to feel like at least I’m having a truthful moment, and not playing this weird game because I’m supposed to be likeable or approachable or accessible.” She pauses. My reaction is to find the funny in it, even if I come out looking weird. ![]() “Celebrity and fame and all that stuff is scary to me. “Those are my defence mechanisms coming into play there,” she says. Plaza admits that her bizarre talk-show appearances – inexplicably featuring everything from fake teeth to low-energy dancing – furthered the notion that she is playing herself. You just have to keep going and hopefully change people’s minds.” It happens to everybody and there’s nothing you can do about it. I do a couple of parts like April and people want to put me in a box, they can’t fathom that I’d be anyone else. “It’s funny, looking back, because when I first started performing in New York I was never known as the ‘sarcasm queen’. “I think it’s just that people don’t have an imagination,” she says. Why does she think she is still considered the poster girl for deadpan humour, even though she has portrayed a mutant parasite ( Legion), a social-media stalker ( Ingrid Goes West) and many other diverse roles since her breakout? She lets out a laugh, then a weary sigh. In reality, Plaza is soft-spoken and friendly, willing to reflect on her career with a healthy dose of self-awareness. ![]() A notification pops up on my desktop: “Evil Hag” has entered the waiting-room. Plaza essentially treats each public appearance like a performance-art piece, ramping up disturbing behaviours to test how much she can get away with. So what does Plaza do? She messes with us, doubling down on this put-on sarcasm to, as she describes it, “make people uncomfortable”. She knows what audiences think of her: that she is as apathetic as April Ludgate, the eye-rolling misomaniac she played for seven years on the beloved sit-com Parks and Recreation. This is an actress who has spoken about gifting her co-stars phials of her own blood, hair and fingernails on late-night TV told old people to “go fuck themselves” when accepting a Young Hollywood award showed a GQ reporter the knife she could easily murder him with and pledged her allegiance to the devil on red carpets. I do not know what to expect when I fire up the Zoom link for my conversation with Aubrey Plaza. ![]()
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