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 to be picture-perfect matches. However My Previous Ass director Megan Park mentioned that she was searching 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 actually 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 feel as a lot as you are feeling like it’s essential to get into the characters.’ After we first all met and frolicked and had dinner collectively, I may 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 form of this pure sisterly factor in addition 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 a complete 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 if there’s precise time journey concerned or if it’s all in her head. However regardless, younger Elliott — who’s brash, daring, and really certain of herself — will get numerous her preconceived notions challenged by her older self. It was necessary for Park that Elliott convey a really particular kind of vitality.
“I hadn’t seen numerous younger girls in motion pictures who had been very cool and grounded, however had been additionally very vivid and cheery and optimistic and kind of sparkly,” Park says. “I don’t know why I hadn’t seen that so much, however I used to be actually searching for anyone who embodied that vitality and was very weak and open and loving, and it was troublesome to seek out. It was form of troublesome to seek out that magical mixture.”
Touchdown on Plaza was a bit of trickier, however as soon as the artistic staff narrowed in on what they had been searching for and separated from looking for a whole lookalike (“We spent numerous 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 form 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 a complete different layer of comedy that I actually cherished.”
My Previous Ass is out in choose theaters now, and in every single place on Sept. 27.