Parks & Rec's Aubrey Plaza 'Blesses' People On Golf Cart

If there would ever be a pope of comedy, actress Aubrey Plaza might have the best chance at it.

Plaza, 28, was in good spirits Saturday while at the Ringling College of Art and Design, visiting the campus as part of the Digital Filmmaking Studio Lab program, and on her way to the college's An Evening at the Avant-Garde, Plaza hopped a ride on a Model T golf cart in a funky costume for the scholarship fundraiser, where well, everyone dresses up in a funky costume. (This year's theme was book characters.)

"Tell everyone that I'm the new pope," Plaza tells Patch, as she waves her hand in a white glove, blowing a whistle and later announcing, "I bless you all."

Plaza is best known for her role as the deadpanned April Ludgate in NBC's "Parks and Recreation," and she is set to star in a movie to be released Aug. 16 called "The To Do List," where she is a high school senior, Brandy Clark, making a check list of sexual experiences before she heads to college. 

She said she loved her time visiting Ringling and joked that she should have been in class more at New York University. Instead, she was busy with the NBC Page Program and worked as an intern at Saturday Night Live's design department, ditching time for class. It appeared to work out well for Plaza.

"Since being here, I kind of realized Oh, I should have gone to class more. Everyone's doing such amazing work. The facilities are amazing," Plaza said about Ringling College. "I got to see those editing bay rooms that you guys have and I was like, wow, this is the perfect environment to be creative, and to just make movies. I was really impressed by everything. I just wished I would have used all that stuff when I was in school. It made me think about the choices that I made because everything is about me—about my life." 

"Would I go to this college?" Plaza said later. "Yes."

Plaza said she would love to bring a screening of The To Do List to Ringling College. The movie is directed by Maggie Carey, who is the wife of Bill Hader on Saturday Night Live. The movie was originally supposed to be released on Valentine's Day and had a raunchy title that CBS Films forced to change, she said.

"Formerly called The H***job, which I will continue to call it in every press, and every opportunity I have because that's the original title of the movie. But CBS Films made us change it to The To Do List. I don't know why," she said, prompting a laugh from the audience. "But I really want to bring it here because I feel like you guys would like it. It's a really bizarre, weird kind of movie that artists such as yourselves would enjoy. And I learn how to give a h***job in the movie, so I want you all to see that." 

The reason why she took the role of Brandy Clark is because it's a departure from the roles Plaza has been placed in, often as a girl who oozes sarcasm with a touch of self-effacing jokes with a dead-panned delivery. She says it's one of her favorite roles, saying Clark is sincere and ambitious.

"She's kind of a Type-A go-getter," she said. "... In high school, I was kind of like Tracy Flick in Election more than anything. I was always the persident of everything. I would always create clubs so I could be president and like, noone else would be in the club." 

The film co-stars Bill Hader, Andy Samberg and Rachel Bilson.

She will also star in Disney's animated feature Monsters University, coming to theaters June 21. It's her first major animated feature, and said it was a challenge. 

"I have no formal voice training or anything, and it was kind of a challenge. The director I was working with, Dan [Scanlon], he worked on Up. He got me in early enough so I didn't have to sync my voice with my monster," she said. "I could just do my lines and improvise, so that if I came up with anything they wanted to use, they could just do it."