Actress Aubrey Plaza is known for playing the morbidly hilarious April Ludgate in Parks and Recreation and was recently seen in an Emmy-nominated performance in the series White Lotus. The actress is known for her deadpan delivery and playing edgy characters.
Plaza starred in the cult X-Men franchise TV show Legion, where she played Lenny Busker a.k.a The Shadow King. The character was initially envisioned to be a man but was changed when series creator Noah Hawley met Aubrey Plaza. Plaza, who is no stranger to weird characters, spoke about how strange it was to play a non-human character.
Aubrey Plaza’s History Of Playing Weird Characters
Before the actress came to be known as the perpetually sarcastic and morbid April Ludgate, Aubrey Plaza started her career as an NBC page and was a stand-up comedian as well as an Improv performer. She gained recognition for her role as Daisy Danby in Judd Appatow’s romantic comedy Funny People.
After appearing in films and sketches with fellow comedians, Plaza had her breakthrough role as April Ludgate in the workplace sitcom Parks and Recreation. The series was created by Michael Schur and Greg Daniels, the people behind the US version of The Office. Schur mentioned in an interview with the AV Club that the character was written for Plaza after casting director Allison Jones met her,
“Allison Jones, who is one of the people who cast the show, called me and said, ‘I just met the weirdest girl I’ve ever met in my life. You have to meet her and put her on your show.’ Aubrey came over to my office and made me feel really uncomfortable for like an hour, and immediately I wanted to put her in the show.”
The character was Plaza’s breakout role and the character was widely liked by fans of the show, especially the relationship shared by Ludgate with her husband Andy Dwyer played by Chris Pratt.
Aubrey Plaza Had A Hard Yet Fun Time On Legion
From 2017 to 2019, Aubrey Plaza starred as Lenny Busker in the FX series Legion, which was based on the X-Men characters from Marvel comics. Plaza’s Lenny Busker is an eccentric, mentally ill patient who appears along with the protagonist David Haller.
The role was initially envisioned to be a middle-aged man but once creator Noah Hawley, known for series such as Fargo, met Aubrey Plaza, he changed the character to be a female. However, Plaza reportedly wanted to give an androgynous twist to the character and hence insisted the lines not be changed. She was allegedly inspired by singer David Bowie’s persona.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Plaza spoke about the various decisions she took to have fun with the character and make her completely unhinged. Speaking about her choice of using henna tattoos, she said,
“It’s always funny when you make a choice like that in the beginning because you get so excited about it. And then as the show goes on, you realize, ‘Oh shit, now we have to do this every day’. It becomes a very cumbersome thing. The main thing I feel now is that there are apparently no rules anymore in general. Anything goes, so let’s just make some crazy shit.”
While Plaza reportedly had fun with the character and the lack of boundaries Busker had once she was dominated by the Shadow King persona, the actress mentioned that it became tiring for her to play a non-human character and constantly be in that zone. She said in an interview with The Guardian,
“It’s a total mindf*ck. It’s mentally and physically exhausting to not exist as a human. At the end of the day, I would just feel like nothing, just this rag doll that’s been thrown around.”
The show ended its three-season run in 2019, gaining positive reviews throughout its airing. Aubrey Plaza was even nominated for the MTV Movie and TV Award for Best Villain.
Source: Vanity Fair, The Guardian, AV Club
