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Hi everyone and thank you for tuning in to the 501st episode of the Hollywood Reporter's awards chatter podcast.

I'm the host Scott Feinberg, and my guest today is a top young actress and producer who is coming off the biggest year of her career so far.

Since establishing herself in comedies on screens big and small, in particular on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, on which she played the key supporting part of April Ludgate, an apathetic intern, for seven seasons spanning 2009 through 2015,

she has to quote The New York Times continually reinvented herself, and to quote The Los Angeles Times, emerged as a performer of surprising depth and range, and a creative force to be reckoned with behind the camera too.

Indeed, this year Amy Polar described her as one of the most interesting actors working today, and Time Magazine selected her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

The star and producer of John Patton Ford's acclaimed 2022 independent film Emily the Criminal, and a standout supporting actress on the second season of Mike White's massively popular 2022 HBO drama series The White Lotus, Aubrey Plaza.

Over the course of our conversation the 38-year-old denied discussed how she was changed by a freak stroke that she suffered at the age of just 21, the insane first week that she spent in LA, during which she landed her parts in funny people, Scott Pilgrim versus the world, and Parks and Rec.

The sense of resentment that she felt for a time about being regarded by some as a good fit only for deadpan characters like April.

Whether she, having twice hosted the Spirit Awards, would like to one day host The Oscars.

Some dish about two of her upcoming projects, Disney Plus's WandaVision Spinoff Agatha, Coven of Chaos, and Francis Ford Coppola's self-finance final film Megalopolis, plus much more.

And so without further ado, let's go to that conversation.

Aubrey, thank you so much for doing the podcast, great to have you, and on this podcast we always begin truly at the beginning.

I wonder if you can just share for our listeners, where were you born and raised, and what did your folks do for a living?

I, hello, thanks for having me, Scott.

I was born in Wilmington, Delaware, at the Wilmington General Hospital, I believe, or Wilmington Hospital, and my parents, my parents have had a lot of jobs over the years.

So, you know, when I was a girl, when I was born, my parents were, my mom was putting herself through night school to become a lawyer, and she did, in fact, become a lawyer, so she is a lawyer.

But she worked all kinds of jobs, like, you know, when I was growing up, putting herself through school and all that, and then my dad is a financial advisor, and he also kind of, yeah.

I believe that there's a lot of funny stories about their jobs, but I believe in, at one point, when they were young, they were both working at a local wallah, and I think my mom was, if you're from the East Coast, you know what a wallah is.

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