Aubrey Plaza and Dan Levy, the stars of “Happiest Season,” are reunited for short film “Decades of Confusion,” which is basically a commercial for fashion brand Loewe. If only Plaza could spell it.
It ain’t your average retail ad: “Black Mirror” director Ally Pankiw directed the short that was penned by “Good Grief” and “Schitt’s Creek” star Levy.
Plaza stars as a contestant in a spelling bee that spans each decade from 1971 to the present day. Levy is the (frustrated) judge. Plaza may not be able to spell “Loewe” (for the sake of the film’s joke, at least), but she sure can put together an outfit from the fashion house. Plaza combs the Loewe archives to transform into a new character for the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, 2000s…
“Wigs, iconic looks from the LOEWE archive, and wrong answers — from 1971 to present day,” the tagline reads.
Plaza is next set to star in Ethan Coen’s dark comedy “Honey Don’t!” The “White Lotus” alum is confirmed to portray an elusive “mystery woman” in the caper co-written by director Coen and his wife — the editor and Coen’s “Drive Away Dolls” co-writer Tricia Cooke. Their new film is set in Bakersfield, California, with Chris Evans playing a cult leader and Margaret Qualley playing a private investigator. Plaza will also appear in Disney+ series “Agatha: Coven of Chaos” and Francis Ford Coppola’s epic “Megalopolis.”
No one does deadpan comedy like Plaza — but it’s not all she does. Plaza previously spoke out on being typecast.
“You do something, people respond to it, and they want to see you do it again, again, and again. I think you just have to be really proactive in changing that narrative for yourself,” Plaza said. “It gave me motivation to prove myself. I think, for a while, I did feel like, ‘Aw man, I’m being put in a box, and I don’t like it, so I’m going to fight to get out of that and show people what I can do,’ or something. But then I started to look at it as a gift. If I convince people so well that I was that one thing and then I do something that’s totally different, it will be that much more satisfying to surprise them. So I started to try to think of it like that and be a little bit more positive and less bitter about it.”
In 2022, Plaza confirmed she wrote and is set to direct a coming family film. We don’t know much beyond that.
“I’m trying to fill the female Tim Burton slot,” Plaza told GQ of the yet-untitled project, which channels “Beetlejuice” and “Hocus Pocus.”
Watch the “Decades of Confusion” short film below.
