In her “Spin Me Round” casting, Aubrey Plaza reveals that she portrayed a fake pie-filled Italian custom
When she perpetrated a massive prank on her fellow cast members in Italy while filming the movie Spin Me Round, Aubrey Plaza demonstrated that the years she spent portraying April, the resident prankster on Parks and Recreation, were worthwhile.
During a private screening of the film at the London Hotel in West Hollywood, Plaza told PEOPLE, “I pretty much made up a very small phoney Italian ritual.”
The film was directed by Jeff Baena, Plaza’s husband, who also co-wrote the screenplay with star Alison Brie. I warned every actor that they would receive a pie in the face at picture-wrapping if they shot in Italy.
Credit: people
Brie, Molly Shannon, Fred Armisen, Debby Ryan, Ego Nwodim, and Ayden Mayeri were among the co-stars Plaza was able to persuade to believe a made-up tradition was real and that they should all expect to get a pie in the face after filming was over.
Is that accurate? Each actor was questioned. I responded, “Yes, that’s what the Italians do,” Plaza explained.
I then firmly resolved to follow through on that. In essence, I created a pie for each actor. We had 11 or 12 performers in the movie, no matter how long the day had been or how worn out they were. Each of their faces was thrown out with a pie. And now I’m going to formalize it so it will endure!
Brie states she was surprised by how effective and popular Plaza’s prank was. She made a joke about how everyone loved it and feared it. It adapted fairly quickly.
Since everyone knew that the pieing was going to happen, the author writes, “Every time the day arrived when the next person was going to wrap, we had to be progressively devious about how we would pie them.”
