Aubrey Plaza Attempted To Join Saturday Night Live In 2004 (But Failed The Audition)

Aubrey Plaza is on a roll. It took a while for her to find her way after "Parks and Recreation" ended and her time as April Ludgate came to a close. Appearing alongside Robert DeNiro in 2016's "Dirty Grandpa" didn't quite catapult her to megastar level, and while 2017's "Ingrid Goes West" was a memorable entry in her filmography, she seemed to fade from the spotlight after her brief flirtation with next-level stardom.

But a consistent output of strong performances in indies like "The Little Hours," "An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn," and "Addicted to Fresno" have demonstrated Plaza's versatile talents and tireless work ethic. And now things have picked up even more, and Plaza is, according to GQ, "leveling up." 2022's "Emily The Criminal" saw her deliver a surprisingly raw performance as an embattled catering company worker turned fraudster. That was quickly followed by a starring role in the second season of HBO Max's hugely popular "White Lotus." And as if that wasn't enough, she'll soon be appearing in Marvel's next attempt at churning out a binge-worthy streaming fare when "Agatha: Coven of Chaos" debuts in late 2023.

In the meantime, to kick off the year, she hosted "Saturday Night Live," where things truly came full circle as Plaza joined her "Parks and Recreation" co-star Amy Poehler in reprising their roles as April Ludgate and Leslie Knope during "Weekend Update." Interestingly enough, the actress' studio 8H visit was even more significant in that it wasn't her first time there. Not only had she worked as an intern on the legendary sketch show, but her journey to stardom could have looked very different had her audition to become an "SNL" cast member gone a different way.

Before she appeared in "Parks and Recreation," Plaza came up in the improv community as part of Chicago's Upright Citizens Brigade Theater — a performance company co-founded by her future co-star, Poehler. It's not surprising, then, that like many a UCB alum, Plaza auditioned for "SNL."

The actress recently appeared on "The Tonight Show" in the lead-up to hosting the NBC sketch show, where she disclosed that she auditioned to become a cast member in 2004. As she told Fallon, "I didn't make it to the Lorne audition, the famous final audition, but I did a preliminary first-round showcase at UCB." And the characters she chose to showcase at the audition were about as off-beat as you might expect from Plaza:

"One character I did was a Puerto Rican news reporter that was always trying to make all of the news stories sexy, even if they were horrific news stories. I was just trying to sex up the news. Then the other one was, I was a pill-popping housewife that had a show called Celebri-Tails, where I would just name celebrities and name what kind of tail they would have if they had a tail. I would say, 'Lindsay Lohan would have a bushy squirrel's tail.' Or, like, 'Bill Clinton would have a polar bear's nub.'"

Despite not making the cut, Plaza went on to become an intern in the design department at "SNL," with four "moody b*****es" who, according to the actress, didn't want to waste time teaching an intern about design. She would also work as an NBC page where she'd frequently lead tours of the studios hungover, sneaking out periodically to "go into the hallway, throw up in a trash can, and continue on." She's come a long way since then.

Plaza doesn't seem like she'd do too well in an audition environment, especially within the framework of Lorne Michaels' hallowed institution. Her clear-cut irreverence just doesn't mesh with the kind of hushed respect you're supposed to display for "SNL." It makes sense that Plaza told NME back in 2021 that "Auditioning always felt like this f***ed-up game that I was playing with life. Like playing the lottery or something." As she went on to explain:

"I think I've always been very fueled by rejection. It only made me want it more, because I think I just had that thing inside of me that's like, 'I wanna be in the club that I'm not in,' or whatever that is, 'I want the thing that I can't have, or the thing that I don't have. And if you tell me that I'm not good enough, I'll just find a way to prove you wrong somehow.'"

Which is exactly what she's done since not making it onto the "SNL" cast all those years ago. In fact, it's exactly what she's done since leaving "Parks and Rec" — overcoming being typecast as the weird, quiet girl and displaying her diverse acting talents in varied projects, especially with 2020's "Black Bear" and 2022's "Emily The Criminal." And if making out with Chloe Fineman wasn't enough to make up for her failed "SNL" audition, standing on that stage to deliver her monologue must have done it for her. I just wish she'd given us a taste of the "pill-popping Celebri-tales housewife" while she was up there.