The question, “What advice would you give to your older or younger self?” is central to the new comedy My Old Ass, from writer/director Megan Park. But the film in which Maisy Stella (Nashville) and Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation, Agatha All Along) play younger and older versions of the lead character Elliot, also explores what it means to identify as one label under the LGBTQ+ umbrella only to discover one’s sexuality is more expansive.
“It just had to be a genuine self-exploration and a bit of confusion. I also think labels are tricky. I grew up in a very lucky way and a way that I know is not everyone's experience,” Stella says. “I really was never pressured to put a label on myself, and I was always what I am. I was always open and I was always queer, but I was never forced into anything.”
Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza in My Old AssMarni Grossman © Amazon Content Services LLC
My Old Ass opens on Elliot’s final summer at home on her family’s rural cranberry farm before she heads to college in Toronto. She hangs out on the lake with her best friends, Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks), hooks up with the cute young woman from town on the regular, and endures her younger brothers. Elliot is proudly out as gay or a lesbian at home and among friends until she meets the guy her older self warned her about — Chad (Wednesday’s Percy Hynes White). It’s a boon that the actors playing the character are both queer, lending heart and authenticity to the story where the one thing Elliot was sure she had figured out was her sexuality.
While Elliot’s burgeoning attraction to Chad is new and curious, it’s not nearly as strange as the night Elliot summons her older self while she’s high on shrooms during a campout with Ruthie and Ro. That 35-ish version of Elliot arrives replete with Plaza’s sardonic world-weariness, and just as young Elliot gleans wisdom from the person she becomes, Stella calls working with Plaza not just a learning experience, but a masterclass.
“Aubrey is just such an artist where she really does just have this thing about her that is just so undeniable. And I’ve always been such a huge fan of her,” Stella says, adding that Plaza is “genuinely brilliant and funny.”
Maisy Stella in My Old Ass Marni Grossman © Amazon Content Services LLC
“I learned so much from her from filming. … I was so taken with her as a scene partner, I was like, Oh, OK. That's how you do it. She was just very reassuring. She would, before any scene, [ask] ‘What do you need from me? What can I do to help you with this?’” she says.
Though Elliot resists her attraction to Chad unsure of why elder Elliot insists she steer clear of him — the real reason arrives late in the film and is a powerful twist that highlights Plaza’s dramatic chops — she eventually allows herself to feel something, and she comes out in reverse to her friends and family.
“I’ve always found labels to be a little bit intimidating — closing yourself into something when I’m young and I’m changing and growing. … I was excited to play a character that was just being honest with themselves, just allowing themselves to change and to just explore and be genuine and honest,” Stella says.
Courtesy © Amazon Content Services LLC
As for what Stella would want to ask her older self if she could, she thinks she has a good idea.
“I feel like my mom is my future, so every time I look at her I’m like, I am going to turn into you,” she says, adding that it’s comforting. “So I feel like I have a future self walking around and I know where I'm headed.”
Watch the full interview with Maisy Stella in the video above. My Old Ass is in theaters now.
