Aubrey Plaza opens up about her failed Saturday Night Live audition. The actress initially started her career performing improv and sketch comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater - which includes Amy Poehler as one of its founding members - before her breakthrough role as April Ludgate in Parks and Recreation. Since the beloved NBC sitcom ended in 2015, Plaza has branched out into more dramatic roles and thrillers, including her revelatory performances in The White Lotus season 2 and the crime thriller Emily the Criminal.
During a recent appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon promoting Emily the Criminal and looking ahead to her Saturday Night Live hosting debut, Aubrey Plaza opened up about the time she auditioned for the sketch show.
Plaza recalled a couple of characters she created for her preliminary audition, one being a Puerto Rican news reporter who was always trying to "sex up the news," and the other a "pill-popping housewife" with a show called "Celebri-Tails." The bizarre characters apparently didn't go over well since Plaza didn't move on to the final Lorne Michaels-moderated audition, though she did land a job as an intern. Read what she shared below:
I didn’t make it to the Lorne [Michaels] audition, the famous final audition, but I did a preliminary first-round showcase. I remember one character I did was like a Puerto Rican news reporter that was always trying to make all of the news stories sexy, even if they were horrific news stories. I was just trying to like, sex up the news or something. [Plaza’s second character was] a pill-popping housewife that had a show called "Celebri-Tails," where I would just name celebrities and name what kind of tail they would have if they had a tail. Like I would say, "Lindsay Lohan would have a bushy squirrel’s tail." Or, like, "Bill Clinton would have a polar bear’s nub." ... They loved me because I did not care about set design at all, and they wanted an intern that had no interest in learning what they did. I was just, like, creepy. Like, I was a creepy stalker. Now I’m gonna host it, so my master plan worked!
Every Upcoming Aubrey Plaza Role
Aubrey Plaza is still fresh off her Golden Globe-nominated performance in The White Lotus season 2 and Emily the Criminal, the latter of which ended up on President Barack Obama's favorite films of 2022 list. However, Plaza already has some intriguing performances lined up to keep her hot streak going. A few of those roles include the upcoming Hulu series Olga Dies Dreaming in which she plays the titular character, and the animated movie The Ark and the Aardvark, in which she voices an intelligent spider named Brain.
Perhaps Plaza's most anticipated upcoming roles are in Marvel's Agatha: Coven of Chaos and Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, in which she will appear alongside star-studded casts. Plaza's role in the WandaVision spinoff series has yet to be revealed, though she has said it is a "really pivotal role" alongside Kathryn Hahn's Agatha Harkness. Plaza's role in Megalopolis is also unknown, though she appears to be one of the film's leads alongside Adam Driver.
While Plaza didn't make the cut for the long-running sketch show as a cast member, she will soon be making her hosting debut. Plaza has been announced as the tenth host of Saturday Night Live season 48 alongside Sam Smith as the musical guest performing songs from their upcoming album Gloria. The Parks and Recreation alum hosts Saturday Night Live on January 21 on NBC, and perhaps Plaza's peculiar characters from her failed audition will resurface during the show's sketches.