Within the new time-travel comedy My Previous Ass, Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza play two variations of the identical character, Elliott: One is a younger, assured teenager, and the opposite is her older self.
The 2 actors don’t actually appear like picture-perfect matches. However My Previous Ass director Megan Park mentioned that she was on the lookout for one thing past only a superficial lookalike in casting two sides of a single character.
“Aubrey requested me, I bear in mind in our first name, ‘Would you like me to essentially examine her and attempt to decide up on her mannerisms? How a lot of this do you wish to be attempting to imitate?’” Park tells Polygon. “And I used to be like, ‘I don’t assume that’s necessary, as a result of a lot time has handed and I believe as a lot as you’re feeling like you might want to get into the characters.’ Once we first all met and frolicked and had dinner collectively, I might inform she was actually taking Maisy in and doing that work for the character.
“However we strive to not focus as a lot on it being an imitation of each other as a lot as simply there being this chemistry and this rapport, which was fairly instantaneous. Aubrey has youthful sisters who’re near Maisy’s age, and Maisy has an older sister. So there was type of this pure sisterly factor additionally they fell into fairly simply and so they simply actually adored one another immediately, which was useful. It fortunately occurred pretty organically.”
The timey-wimey plotline kicks off when younger Elliott takes an entire lot of psychedelic mushrooms, and through her journey, finally ends up encountering the older model of herself. It’s performed fairly ambiguously as as to whether there’s precise time journey concerned or if it’s all in her head. However regardless, younger Elliott — who’s brash, daring, and really positive of herself — will get lots of her preconceived notions challenged by her older self. It was necessary for Park that Elliott convey a really particular form of power.
“I hadn’t seen lots of younger ladies in motion pictures who had been very cool and grounded, however had been additionally very brilliant and cheery and optimistic and form of sparkly,” Park says. “I don’t know why I hadn’t seen that rather a lot, however I used to be actually on the lookout for any individual who embodied that power and was very susceptible and open and loving, and it was troublesome to search out. It was type of troublesome to search out that magical mixture.”
Touchdown on Plaza was slightly trickier, however as soon as the artistic group narrowed in on what they had been on the lookout for and separated from looking for an entire lookalike (“We spent lots of time getting caught up in [which potential actors] have blond hair”) all of it clicked collectively.
“At a sure level it’s like, Who will we wish to see sitting on that log collectively bantering and having that type of rapport?” Park says. “As quickly as Aubrey’s identify got here up, it was like, Oh shit, that makes good sense.
“It’s additionally a lot funnier to me that [young Elliott] thinks [Aubrey Plaza] is so previous and she or he’s not even 40,” she provides with amusing. “And it added an entire different layer of comedy that I actually cherished.”
My Previous Ass is out in choose theaters now, and all over the place on Sept. 27.
