S1E3: April Ludgate, 19, cool enough to be invited anywhere and yet she chooses here
What do Aubrey Plaza and I have in common? Da Bomb hot sauce
I hate to show my hand so early, but if I have to choose one favorite Parks and Rec character, it’s April Ludgate. Also known by her real-life alias: the deadpan, sarcastic, witchy, hilarious Aubrey Plaza.
Honestly, episode 3 is a bit meh — it’s funny, for sure, in a very classic Parks and Rec way, but it’s nothing to write home about. I had completely forgotten it existed until this rewatch. There’s too much Mark Brendenawicz in it for my taste. In ep 3, Leslie tries to drum up press for her new project by talking to local reporter, Shawna Malway-Tweep. Shawna comes to the Parks department for interviews and, surprise surprise, hijinks ensue. Andy (on the record) reveals he was absolutely blacked out when he fell into the Pit, Mark hits on Shawna and ends up going home with her, Leslie gets jealous in a very chaotic, bulldog-y way, Mark literally almost sabotages the entire park by not understanding the core rule of journalism (everything’s on the record unless you specify otherwise), and then has the nerve to pull the “we’re just hooking up and nothing else” card right after Shawna tries to DTR. Come on!
There are some great jokes in this one, but its absolute highlight is the real introduction of April Ludgate. We’ve met April fleetingly in the past few episodes, but I don’t think she has any speaking lines. Here, her speaking lines are still minimal (the writers are still taking “supporting cast member” literally) but we start to get a sense of her personality. Mainly: looking bored and flipping through magazines.
I’m kidding, I can’t do Aubrey so dirty like that. That’s just what April wants us to think, because she’s smarter than everyone in the room. I was actually re-listening to her episode of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend yesterday ahead of writing this. Aubrey was talking about developing the character of April Ludgate and said that she pitched her as “a college intern who’s super smart but hates everything she’s doing.”
Wait wait wait, you’re asking…did Aubrey invent the character of April Ludgate?
Honestly, a bit. On the Conan episode, she talks about how she got hired to Parks and Rec. She was on a trip to LA meeting with the absolutely iconic casting director Allison Jones (name any romcom or comedy from the 2000s, Allison probably cast it) for a role in a Judd Apatow movie. Allison set Aubrey up to meet with The Office writer Greg Daniels, who started talking to her about the meaning of life and what happens when you die. You know, casual audition stuff. Once Aubrey established her appropriate level of spookiness and it became clear she had some sort of role in this new project Greg was building, she pitched the character of April Ludgate. The idea stuck, and the rest is history.
If there’s one common theme I’ve learned from listening to interview after interview with Aubrey Plaza: I honestly have NO idea what her real personality is like. That’s of course true for so many celebrities — as much as I want to think I know Taylor Swift personally, I have no idea what she’d be like to gib gab with over dinner. I have to assume it would be a grand ole time, but who knows! They’re celebrities! We’re only seeing what they want us to see!
(Anyone who knows me knows that it would likely also be a disaster were I to ever gib gab with Taylor Swift over dinner, mainly because I don’t handle nerves very well. I have 2 main states when I’m nervous, and neither are good: 1) word vomit to the max, talking so fast you might wonder how I’m breathing. Or 2) entering this strange, rare shy state where I lose the power of speech. Knowing how much I usually talk, option 2 is scarier).
I digress. Aubrey Plaza is an amazing comedian and she’s a master at projecting her terrifyingly deadpan and spooky image. She talks about how, when she used to wait tables in high school and college, she would act like a different character for every single customer. I thiiiiink her day-to-day personality is similar to how she is on screen, but for all I know, she’s still the waiter and I’m a gullible and unsuspecting diner in the restaurant. This all could be some big elaborate bit. She’s definitely someone I’d be terrified to upset for fear she might haunt me after she dies. There’s a 100% chance she will come back as a ghost and a 100% chance she will be a prankster-style poltergeist. I cannot risk getting on her bad side. I am also obsessed with her.
Parks and Rec was essentially Aubrey’s debut into TV and Hollywood. She grew up in Delaware (she has a running joke that she’s the first most famous person from Delaware and Joe Biden is second, which Biden himself confirmed in a video on her Hot Ones interview), went to a Catholic All Girls high school, and took improv classes as a teenager and young adult, which is how she got her start in comedy. She also worked as an NBC page during college. If you don’t know what an NBC page is, google Kenneth from 30 Rock. It’s actually a very prestigious program and many comedy legends worked as NBC pages, but in reality the pages are basically ushers for all of NBC’s late night comedy shows, including SNL. Aubrey jokes that she made up fake stories to tell tour groups and hung out with the SNL set design guys. She was basically the worst page of all time.
I have a few friends who were / are NBC pages and I quite honestly can’t wrap my head around the idea of Aubrey doing this job. I think it’s a common sentiment, because when she hosted SNL in 2023, she donned her old page uniform and gave viewers a walk through of her old duties (with a surprise appearance from Amy Poehler!!).
Aubrey’s come a long way since her page days and she’s now a Hollywood legend: she’s the star of White Lotus season 2, she’s a total “tis the damn season”-style ex in Happiest Season (not actually, because we want Kristen Stewart to be happy, but still…justice for Aubrey’s character), and she talks about how the craziest part of working on Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates was seeing Zac Efron rig up a TRX bar to a palm tree and pump iron between takes. (I definitely feel like this is not the right way to use “pump iron” in a sentence. Who cares. The important part here is that Aubrey has casual stories of Zac Efron. Movie star status.) She’s multi-faceted and so talented, but it’s impossible to forget that we first knew her as “April Ludgate, 19, cool enough to be invited anywhere and yet she chooses here.”
One of my all time favorite Aubrey Plaza interviews is her episode of Hot Ones. She starts off with her usual bored-looking deadpan, but as the wings get increasingly hotter, she absolutely falls apart. She snorts milk to try and cool off and, immediately after finishing Da Bomb (the second hottest sauce but arguably the most life-rocking), she makes a grievous error.
She. Touches. Her. Eyes.
The host, Sean, tries to warn her, but it’s too little too late. The damage has been done.
Reader, I can sympathize here, because I too have accidentally touched my eyes after eating Da Bomb. It was really, really, REALLY not fun. Because you asked, here’s the story.
Immediately after graduating from college, I moved into an apartment with one of my best friends, Mikaela, and two guys we knew from college. One of them, Sam, is the person who first introduced me to Hot Ones and, specifically, the Aubrey Plaza episode. Sam similarly had a love of hot sauce and collected many of the sauces from the show to try out on different foods. At one point, one entire shelf of our fridge was dedicated to hot sauces.
Important note here — I graduated in 2020 and moved into my first apartment with these fools during Covid, so we were looking for anything to do to kill the time that summer before we all started work in the fall. Everything was one step up from twiddling our thumbs day after day and no dumb ideas were off limits. I actually don’t think Sam suggested we do a full Hot Ones-style challenge because I really don’t remember that and I think I would, but however he got me to do it …. I ate Da Bomb. More accurately, I suffered through Da Bomb for a full blown 10-to-15 minutes. And just when I thought I was over the hump and my soul started reentering my body, I. Touched. My. Eyes. Sam looked at me with absolute fear and I realized immediately what I had done, but there was no turning back.
The thing about Da Bomb is that it likes to creep up on you slowly. It started with a small tingle, an irritation. I can handle this, I thought. It’s not as bad as I thought. Cut to: it’s way worse than I thought. My eyes are burning red, I’m dousing them in water in the bathroom for the next 20 minutes, and I was blinking away tears for the rest of the afternoon. I vowed, then and there, to never touch Da Bomb again. And I curse the day Sam was born. (Just kidding, Sam, but please don’t ever put me through that again.)
Aubrey, I see you, I hear you. Stay strong.
There’s one more Aubrey Plaza fun fact that’s arguably my favorite thing I’ve ever learned about her: for several years, she played on a women’s rec basketball team in LA called the Pistol Shrimps. No, it’s not a joke. Yes, they were seriously playing basketball.
In all honesty, I had planned on telling the full story of the Pistol Shrimps right here, right now. But in doing research to write this, I went down a Pistol Shrimps rabbit hole. This is a silly story Aubrey tells in somewhat passing on both Hot Ones and in her Conan episode, and I didn’t think it was much more than that. I was so wrong. One quick google helped me realize there’s actually an entire comedy documentary called The Pistol Shrimps made about this LA women’s rec basketball league, so I of course immediately watched it.
It is … a perfect movie. And I think it deserves more real estate than a few paragraphs at the bottom of this post. Sorry to leave you with ye olde cliffhanger, but twist my arm — another reason to write about Aubrey. Oh no!
Here’s a Pistol Shrimps glimpse I’ll leave you with. Till next time:
Just to be fair, some of the best non-Aubrey moments from this episode:
Leslie eating a leaf in the cold open and her tongue instantly start swelling up and her going “there’s a sweet aftertaste though” around her swollen tongue and making a total Rachel Dratch-esque disgusted face
Back with Leslie assuming everyone else knows the same obscure Pawnee knowledge that she does (“I’m sure you remember the Tucker Park Graffiti Removal Project”) and it’s a WALL OF GRAFFITI PENISES
Leslie freaking out during Shawna’s interview when everyone gets off topic and muttering “stay on message.” Also every time Leslie refers to Shawna as “the press”
I almost lost my mind at Ron’s first ever mention of his ex-wife: “Her name is Tammy Swanson, and she’s serious bitch.” Foreshadowwwwing!
Leslie and Ann’s first casual hang out at Ann’s house (even though Leslie invites herself in)!!
The scene where Shawna reads Leslie a list of comments from her colleagues where they basically all say that the park will never get made and Leslie just keeps trucking on through the reasons why she doesn’t believe them is honestly kinda sad?
But this episode also has me wondering if I’m supposed to be rooting for Leslie and Mark in the early days? I feel like I’m tainted by the knowledge of what comes later and my general Mark hatred but I couldn’t stop wondering if the show is trying to leave the possibility open early on. Will they won’t they energy?
I always forget she and Tom share an office until Mark comes into apologize to Leslie for telling Shawna he didn’t think the park would get built and out of nowhere Tom goes “woah! You nailed Malway-Tweep!?”
If you want to gib gab with me (I promise I won’t get shy), then:
And please sir….
Housekeeping! My last post was absolutely RIDDLED with typos because I decided to proofread after I hit publish, not before (that’s the correct order, right?). There’s a 100% chance this happens again, so I’d recommend reading these posts in the Substack app or on the Park It web version (I sound like a boomer saying “web version) instead of your email so you can see this post-typo fixing !!! Please save me from more texts like this from Mikaela, even though we love her careful eagle eye:
april and andy are the best hahaha