Aubrey Plaza once spoke about a ‘nightmare’ she had while filming one of her earlier movies.
You’re likely to know her from… all sorts of things really but if it’s anything in particularly, it’s probably going to be Parks and Recreation.
She’s been in loads of other stuff too, like The White Lotus, and more recently, Agatha All Along, but about 11 years ago, she appeared in comedy movie The To-Do List, which contained the first sex scene she’d performed.
Speaking to the New York Times about the film, she said: “It was a nightmare.
“I was like, ‘this is the weirdest acting job I’ve ever had in my life’.”
Of course, since The To-Do List released all the way back in 2013, it’s probably safer to say it was the ‘weirdest acting job’ she’d ever had in her life so far.
Acting can be a bit of a weird gig when you think about it. (Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic)
The movie had her playing high school graduate Brandy, who sets out to have sex with her crush Rusty (Scott Porter) by the end of the summer.
Numerous hijinks ensure, and elsewhere in The To-Do List, there’s a scene where Plaza’s character pleasures herself and that part of the film is actually unsimulated.
She told Conan O’Brien that in her head she ‘envisioned a nice scene’ where you’d just see her hand leave the frame and let the audience imagination take over where the screen left off.
However, she said when she got on set, the camera was mounted on the ceiling and she did actually have to flick the bean while being filmed.
“That’s what I thought I was going into, but then when I showed up, the camera was mounted on the ceiling, I was in my underwear and a Clinton t-shirt, and there were a bunch of old men smoking, ya know, the crew guys,” Plaza recounted.
This other part of the movie has her doing it for real, and she’d been expecting the camera to artfully cut away. (CBS Films)
“And then I went and touched myself. I thought I was doing one thing and when I showed up it was a whole different thing, it was a full body shot.
“And I asked the director, ‘What should I do?’ And she said, ‘Masturbate, like it says in the script’.”
Plaza said in hindsight that scene was ‘a little bit the most nerve-racking’ to film.
The movie’s director Maggie Carey later said that Plaza was ‘so brave’ to tackle the scenes in the film.
She told Screen Slam: “And she had no problem putting herself in these very awkward situations. But, you know, it’s played for comedy and she just nailed it.
“It was just so fun to work with her, yeah, she’s very, err, gutsy.”