How Aubrey Plaza Infuses Heritage Into Her Characters

Credit - Austin Hargrave—AUGUST

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Aubrey Plaza is having the kind of year that Hollywood publicists dream of. Following her much lauded turn in the hit HBO series The White Lotus, the former Parks and Recreation actor starred in the indie film My Old Ass in which she plays a 39-year-old woman—Plaza turned 40 in June—advising her younger self; she has become a celebrity face of the WNBA right when the league is blowing up; and this fall she will star in both Francis Ford Coppola’s much-talked-about dystopian drama Megalopolis and the Marvel TV series Agatha All Along.

In fact, she wound up filming parts of Megapolis and Agatha All Along at the same time. She cites some vague overlapping themes. In Megalopolis, Coppola’s self-funded opus, Plaza plays a morally bankrupt journalist. In Agatha All Along, she’s a witch. “They’re both villainous characters. But I’m a platinum blonde dripping in diamonds, wearing thousands of dollars of Versace gowns in Megalopolis. And then for Agatha, I’m wearing a jet-black wig with a warrior-style supervillain getup,” Plaza says. “I felt completely insane. I felt like I was ripping a hole in the fabric of the universe and quantum leaping myself to different worlds.”

Still, Plaza took an active role in developing her characters. “I have a different kind of experience than a lot of other Latinx actors because a lot of people don’t even know that I’m half Puerto Rican,” she says. “It’s something that I always like to remind people of and bring to the table.” Before they began filming Megalopolis, Coppola invited his actors to workshop the script, improvise, and even rewrite parts of their characters. And the Agatha team approached Plaza early in the process about joining the show, allowing her to help shape the baddie she’d play. “My journey has been a lot about infusing my heritage into these stories and characters in ways that people might not think to do,” she says, “because people have kind of put Latina characters in such a box.”

Plaza joins Marvel just as the studio is trying to earn back its fans’ devotion by cutting down on the number of projects it produces a year and making sure the properties that do make it to the screen are top-notch. “The Marvel of it all was the least appealing thing about it, because I’m hesitant to become part of that machine,” Plaza says.

Still, she wanted to work with Agatha’s star Kathryn Hahn, who had guest starred on Parks and Recreation, but the two actors never shared a scene. And Plaza was impressed with Jac Schaeffer, the writer behind Marvel Studios’ first—and still most transgressive—show for Disney+, WandaVision, and this sequel series. “I haven’t seen a lot of Marvel television, but I watched WandaVision, and I felt like, wow, this is transcending the Marvel tropes, and it’s kind of elevated,” Plaza says. “And I love the idea of a show centered around a coven. That’s something I’ve been interested in my whole life.” Fans of Parks and Recreation may remember that Plaza broke out on that show because of her droll delivery—she’d joke in a monotone that she had a vibrant personality as a Latina, poking fun at the stereotype—and witchy vibes.

She’s not alone. Plaza went viral last year when she and Wednesday actor Jenna Ortega—who shares Plaza’s admiration for the occult and stars in the recently released Beetlejuice Beetlejuice—presented at the SAG Awards in a simultaneous spooky deadpan. It’s hard to imagine Ortega’s success channeling that particular sinister vibe without Plaza having paved the way. “I just always am looking for opportunities to actually portray Latina characters, so that I can show the younger generation there’s all kinds of Hispanic characters,” says Plaza. “It’s not just these stereotypes.”

Write to Eliana Dockterman at eliana.dockterman@time.com.