Aubrey Plaza

Aubrey Plaza came out of the Upright Citizens Brigade, where the training is improvisation and the house style is committing to a bad idea completely. She studied at NYU's Tisch School, made her feature debut in Mystery Team in 2009, and was cast the same year as April Ludgate on Parks and Recreation. April was written as a bored intern and became one of the show's best characters because Plaza refused to soften her: the joke is that the deadpan comes not from cool detachment but from a very specific private contempt.

That deadpan made her famous and then nearly trapped her. The films from 2010 to 2016 are largely variations on it, from the friend who openly despises the hero in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World to the party girls of Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates and Dirty Grandpa. What rescued her was the discovery that the same flat delivery is frightening when the character actually means it. Safety Not Guaranteed in 2012 was the first sign, a lead role in a small film about wanting to believe something ridiculous.

Since then she has produced her way into better parts. Ingrid Goes West and The Little Hours, both from 2017, were hers; so was Emily the Criminal in 2022, a lean crime picture she carries alone. Legion spent three seasons letting her play something other than a person and is the strangest thing on her record. The White Lotus brought an Emmy nomination for a lawyer on holiday with people she is starting to hate, which is the whole method in one part: perfectly polite, visibly calculating.