In the new time travel comedy My old assMaisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza play two versions of the same character, Elliott: one is a young, confident teenager, the other is her older self.
The two actors not Really look like beautiful couples. But My old ass Director Megan Park said that when casting two sides of a single character, she was looking for more than just a superficial doppelganger.
“I remember Aubrey asked me on our first phone call, ‘Do you want me to really study her and try to figure out her idiosyncrasies? How much of that do you want to emulate?'” Park says. “And I said, ‘I don’t think that matters because so much time has passed and I think you have to get into the characters as much as you want.’ When we all met for the first time and hung out and had dinner, I could tell she was really getting into Maisy and doing that work for the character.
“But we try not to focus so much on it being an imitation, but more on the fact that there’s just this chemistry and this harmony that happened quite spontaneously. Aubrey has younger sisters who are around Maisy’s age, and Maisy has an older sister. So there was this kind of natural sisterhood that they also hit it off quite easily, and they really adored each other right off the bat, which was helpful. Thankfully, it happened quite organically.”
The time-bending plot begins when young Elliott takes a whole lot of psychedelic mushrooms and encounters her older self during her trip. It’s pretty ambiguous whether this is actual time travel or if she’s just imagining it all. But regardless, many of the preconceived ideas of young Elliott – who is sassy, brave and very confident – are challenged by her older self. It was important to Park that Elliott convey a very specific kind of energy.
“I hadn’t seen many young women in movies who were very cool and down-to-earth but also very smart, happy, optimistic and kind of radiant,” says Park. “I don’t know why I hadn’t seen that kind of thing a lot, but I was really looking for someone who embodied that energy and was very vulnerable, open and loving, and it was difficult to find that. It was kind of difficult to find that magical combination.”
Choosing Plaza was a little trickier, but once the creative team focused on what they were looking for and moved away from finding a complete doppelgänger (“We spent a lot of time looking at which potential actors had blonde hair”), everything fell into place.
“At a certain point it is like this: Who would we like to see sitting together on this tree trunk, joking and maintaining such harmony?“, says Park. “When Aubrey’s name came up, it was like: Oh shit, that makes total sense.
“I also think it’s a lot funnier that (young Elliott) thinks (Aubrey Plaza) is so old, even though she’s not even 40 yet,” she adds with a laugh. “And that added a whole other level of comedy that I really loved.”
My old ass is now playing in select theaters and everywhere on September 27th.
