The “White Lotus” Season 2 star confirmed an upcoming, top-secret family-friendly film, which she wrote and is set to direct, in a cover story with GQ. “I’m trying to fill the female Tim Burton slot,” Plaza said of the yet-untitled project, which channels “Beetlejuice” and “Hocus Pocus.” Plaza will produce through her company Evil Hag Productions. And while the “Emily the Criminal” actress may aspire to give auteur Burton’s aesthetic a female twist, she is playing a “female Bond” for the Guy Ritchie-helmed action comedy “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre.” Plaza and co-star Jason Statham try to out-007 one another as CIA agents, with Plaza adding, “If I’m the female Bond, what does Bond do? Bond gets the girl. Bond is objectifying everybody and also being a badass. So I objectified Statham the whole time. Literally slapping his butt. I think they were all scared of me. Like, who is this girl who’s coming in so hot?”
Plaza is also set to star in the Disney+ series “Agatha: Coven of Chaos” and is currently filming Francis Ford Coppola’s epic “Megalopolis” opposite Adam Driver, Shia LaBeouf, and Forest Whitaker. “To go from Mike White to Francis Ford Coppola, that’s a good year for me,” Plaza reflected. “I’m trying to manifest this. I’m trying to work with brilliant directors.” The “Parks and Recreation” alum partnered with husband and longtime collaborator Jeff Baena for “Spin Me Round” this year, and addressed playing against type during a SAG-AFTRA Foundation event moderated by IndieWire’s Eric Kohn. “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.” She continued, “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.” Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
