Aubrey Plaza explores evils of social media
TORONTO — Actor Aubrey Plaza has a complicated relationship with social media.
As a producer on two films this year, including this week’s release Ingrid Goes West, she said she gets excited promoting those projects on Twitter and Instagram.
But as her character in Ingrid Goes West shows, there’s also a well-known dark side to online life, and Plaza said when it comes to sharing personal stuff, she has “more negative feelings about it than positive.”
“I think there’s a lot of great things about it, but I think the negative can be kind of scary and I think it can sometimes leave people feeling isolated,” Plaza said by phone from Los Angeles.
“For me personally, sometimes it makes me feel bad, so I try to be very aware of how I feel when I’m on it and when I’m using it.”
Out Friday in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, Ingrid Goes West stars Plaza as the titular character, who develops unhealthy obsessions with Instagram “influencers.” When she moves to Los Angeles to be closer to her latest obsession, a socialite played by Elizabeth Olsen, she grapples with mental-health issues as the two become close.
Matt Spicer directed and co-wrote the film, which won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival and is described as “Single White Female for the social-media generation.” Co-stars include O’Shea Jackson Jr., Wyatt Russell and Billy Magnussen.
“I think the things that scare me the most about social media and just the internet in general are just those moments in my day when I am kind of mindlessly on those spaces, when I pick my phone up in a moment of boredom and I’m going on Instagram,” said Plaza, who played deadpan April Ludgate on Parks and Recreation.
“Those moments are scary to me because it’s an unconscious thing, and I think a lot of people deal with that, where it’s filling this space in our day where we otherwise could be present and enjoying our lives in the physical, tangible world.”
Plaza said she’s more interested in using social media as a tool to promote her work, not her personal life. In fact, she also has a private Instagram account under a different name.
“I’ve had that way longer than I’ve had this new one,” said Plaza. “That’s one thing that I really like about Instagram, is that you do have the option to be private.
“So in that way, I can use it just like a normal person, just like anyone else and just follow my actual, real friends and have them follow me. And I can definitely be a little bit more of myself on there, because those are people that I actually know.”
Plaza said she felt compassion for her character and tried to make her feel as real as possible.
“She behaves questionably … so it’s easy to villainize her,” she said. “But I think I always wanted to just focus on where her motivation is coming from and for me, it’s a place of deep loneliness and insecurity and I relate to that.
“She’s someone who is misunderstood and really just wants so badly to be liked and to have a friend, and that, to me, is just a universal feeling that I feel like we’ve all felt at one point or another in our lives.”
Though Plaza prefers to keep her public social media accounts more professional than personal, she said she doesn’t judge other celebrities who do otherwise.
“I think we’re all kind of in the same boat, and I think it’s really confusing as an actor nowadays because you are kind of expected to have this public social media following,” said Plaza, whose other recent projects include the film The Little Hours and the series Legion.
“It’s hard to navigate, so I think everyone is just doing whatever their version of it is and good luck with that. I don’t know what’s right or what’s wrong.”