My Old Ass was "very close to home" for Aubrey Plaza
"I definitely envisioned talking to my younger self... and going to a place where maybe I wasn't so jaded."
A thought experiment that often comes up is the question of what advice we might have for our naive younger selves given the chance – what wisdom would we choose to impart to make life that little bit easier to navigate?
This is a question that comes up again in writer/director Megan Park's new coming of age film My Old Ass, but what makes the movie stand out is that it also considers the opposite. Might we actually also be able to learn something from our younger selves?
The charming film stars up-and-comer Maisy Stella as a young woman just turning 18 who – on a mushroom trip – is brought face to face with a version of herself more than two decades later, played by Aubrey Plaza.
And, speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com, Plaza revealed that the film struck a chord with her almost instantly, in part because she and Park are basically the same age.
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"I just turned 40," she said. "I was 38 or 39 when we shot the movie, so it was very, very close to home for me, where I felt like... I definitely envisioned talking to my younger self and kind of going back there and going to a place where, maybe I wasn't so jaded, or maybe, you know, beaten down by myself, you know."
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She added: "So it was refreshing to think about... like, remember when things were so whatever, simple or hopeful, you know."
But Plaza said that she also thought about the flip side – the things she might tell her younger self now if she really did have the chance.
"I do feel like I've learned a lot," she said. "And I'm like, in a place where I would love to be able to say to my younger self, don't worry. Everything's gonna work out."
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Although they are playing the same character at different points of her life, Plaza and Stella didn't get too many opportunities to meet and discuss the project before going to set, but they were still able to pick up on a few things that made the character seem consistent.
"I think we really did make the most of our time and I think we both had a very special way of, like, not putting too much pressure and not obsessing over the wrong things," Stella explained.
"Like, I feel like we just.... there was no stress really, around, like, our differences and things like that. Like, we just kind of, I don't know, I feel like we focused more on, like, physicality."
Plaza added: "When I met Maisy a couple days before we started shooting, I definitely was, like, paying attention to how she talked, because I there were certain, like, Canadian-isms or whatever with how she pronounced some of her words.
"And I didn't even think about that before I got there, and then I was like, 'Oh, she actually says some words, like, very different than me,' so I better pay attention to that.
"But it was more about just capturing her essence and her spirit and just having fun. I think it's like, you kind of let all that stuff fall away, if you just believe genuinely that they love each other and yeah, that they're in it together or something."
My Old Ass is showing in cinemas from Friday 27th September 2024.
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