If you could tell your younger self something, what would it be? That question sets the premise for My Old Ass, a delightful coming-of-age comedy starring Aubrey Plaza and Maisy Stella.
In the film, directed and written by Megan Park, 18-year-old Elliott (Stella) comes face-to-face with her older self (Plaza), who offers a stern warning about her love life.
It’s been a while since there has been a female-focused coming-of-age movie, one of the last being Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart in 2019. Before that, there was 2017’s Lady Bird. My Old Ass is already a hit both with critics and audiences as it sits at 91% on Rotten Tomatoes. So why is this genre so overlooked? Plaza and Stella have some thoughts.
“I think it’s hard to get it right and I think we’re still in a time where female directors, statistically, there just aren’t as many of them. Those stories have to be first on the page,” Plaza said. “I think it’s [also] about female voices being lifted up. We’re still trying to flood the world, I guess, with those stories. I think they’re happening, but not as fast as traditionally male stories.”
Stella agreed and said these kinds of films are “so hard to do.”
“I feel like the younger generation is very excited by movies like this and really cling onto them,” the 20-year-old actress explained. “And that’s why Booksmart, Lady Bird or movies like this, they’re such standout movies and they’re such standalone movies that are so cherished. But they are hard to nail and they’re hard to write and they’re hard to get made. It takes a lot of trust. I hope that we get more.”
Fans know Stella from Nashville, but after starring as Daphne Conrad on the hit show for six seasons, the child star took a break from Hollywood and the music industry. Her four-year hiatus being a “normal” kid ended up preparing her for her film debut with this project.
“The four years that I wasn’t on Nashville and I just went back to school and completely lived without any obligation or work was literally my prep,” she said. “I can’t really imagine what it would have been like if I hadn’t stopped working and this happened now. Coming out of having four summers, it was very similar to what Elliott was experiencing … minus the mushrooms.” (Plaza’s character comes to Elliott during a mushroom trip the summer before she leaves for college.)
Plaza (The White Lotus, Megalopolis, Agatha All Along) has had the opposite of a break, but says she couldn’t let herself pass up this opportunity.
“It really touched me,” Plaza said. “I felt very much that [Megan] had something to say with the film and that she was gonna do it the right way. I think there’s a lot of ways that it could have gone wrong or just what could have been handled differently. It could have been more cheesy… I just felt like I was in really good hands.”
The film is a love story, although when you’re watching, that might not jump off the screen at first.
“I hope people feel the healing of it all,” Plaza said. “I think it’s such a story about healing and grief. I’m such a romantic person — I want love stories always. I wanna be in love stories, I wanna watch love stories and those are my favorite kinds of movies. So even though it’s so sad — there’s something sad and kind of intense happening — it really ultimately is a love story. From the front and from the back and from the side. You get to kind of almost experience it backwards and that just doesn’t happen, but it’s still there. It’s romantic.”
My Old Ass is in select theaters now and opens everywhere Sept. 27.
