Writer-director Megan Park and actress Maisy Stella discussed the Sundance-premiering comedy My Old Ass, now streaming on Prime Video.
After Park’s feature directorial debut, The Fallout, premiered during the virtual SXSW Film Festival–now the SXSW Film & TV Festival–in 2021, the filmmaker savored the experience at Sundance when she premiered sophomore film My Old Ass in January. Park also discussed her writing process and how mushrooms found their way into the film while singing the praises of producer Margot Robbie.
For Gotham-nominated actress Maisy Stella, My Old Ass marked her return to acting after Nashville went off the air in 2018. She was already filming before Aubrey Plaza signed onto the film but Plaza was sent the dailies to craft her performance for the older version of Elliott. She discusses the rehearsal process that went into the musical sequence in the film.
In My Old Ass, Elliott (Maisy Stella) goes camping with her friends ton celebrate her 18th birthday and comes face-to-face with her 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza) during a wild mushroom trip. After her older self warns her about what she should and shouldn’t do, it causes Elliott to rethink everything she knows about her family and love. Stella stars alongside Percy Hynes White, Maddie Ziegler, Kerrice Brooks and Aubrey Plaza.
Following its theatrical release this past fall, My Old Ass is now streaming on Prime Video.
Megan, it’s so nice to talk with you. Maisy, it’s so nice to meet you. How are you doing today?
Maisy Stella: Oh, we’re good.
Megan Park: Good. Yeah.
What was the genesis behind My Old Ass?
Megan Park: It was not doing mushrooms and being my younger or older self. I wish that had been. I wish that—
Maisy Stella: You should start lying about that.
Megan Park: I should start lying, yeah.
Maisy Stella: No one knows that that didn’t happen.
Megan Park: That’s true. That’s true. No, I mean, I was home in Canada. I grew up not far from where we shot the movie. I was feeling really nostalgic. I was sleeping in my childhood bedroom. I had just had a baby so it was thinking about life and time and parenthood through a different perspective.
It was really that conversation that ends up being in the film with Chad and Elliot where he’s talking about there was a last time that you played pretend with your friends and you didn’t know it was the last time. It was that feeling and that idea that made me want to have that conversation between a younger and older version. But I didn’t really know where the story was gonna go. I knew it was a big idea, but I wanted it to be really grounded and authentic and sort of the mushroom way into it. All of that came once I opened my laptop and just started writing the story. I didn’t really know when I started page one, what was gonna happen and where it was gonna go. It was very personal and therapeutic figuring out a lot of things about time.
Maisy Stella: She’s just a genius so it’s hard for her to explain to us how she does it. It’s just, yeah, she’s just a genius.
Megan Park: I don’t know if that’s true, but yeah, it was an emotion-based idea is what I’ll say. It came from an emotional place.
At what point did mushrooms enter the picture during the writing process?
Megan Park: I mean, I am a writer who kind of just starts on page one and figures it out. I get surprised is what’s happening along the way, too. So yeah, I often listen to the same song on repeat and just kind of zone out into another century and then I close my laptop at the end of the day and then reread it the next day. I’m like, what did I just write? This is wild.
Maisy Stella: You’re like a channel. Something comes through you, for real.
Megan Park: I don’t know what is coming through.
Maisy Stella: That’s so crazy.
But yeah, I think the mushrooms I really did want something that felt, it’s a crazy idea that I didn’t want it to feel too sci-fi and genre. I want it to feel very human and grounded and real. Mushrooms, oddly, was sort of the most grounded way into a pretty wild idea because you really could be like, did she have that trip? Like what happened? I really could imagine a bunch of 18 year olds in Canada just doing mushrooms while they’re going camping. Obviously, that happens pretty early on in the movie so it was there pretty early once I started writing, but it was a discovery for me too.
Maisy, did you work with Aubrey Plaza in crafting your character since you’re playing the younger version?
Maisy Stella: Well, I would have. I think honestly this situation was slightly different because I was filming already when Aubrey was attached. I was somehow cast first and I was already filming. Aubrey was sent dailies of me and we 100% met definitely in the middle. I had already kind of established baby Elliot so she kind of had to come a little bit more to where I was, where in any other situation, obviously, I would be meeting her exactly where she was standing.
But yeah, I think we just kind of energetically tried to match and meet and that’s all that we could do really because we’re not a physical match exactly. I think she definitely matched my physicality a lot. I noticed when I watch it, certain movements or the way that she’s speaking, which was so incredible and cool. But yeah, I think we kind of just matched.
Having watched Nashville back in the day, how excited were you to get to do a musical sequence in My Old Ass?
Maisy Stella: I was so excited. Oh my gosh.
Megan Park: I need to watch Nashville.
Maisy Stella: Yeah.
Megan Park: I’ve seen clips.
Maisy Stella: My baby, I was literally eight when it started so I was so, so little. But I get really embarrassed of the middle years. I’m like, yeah, go watch an episode where I’m eight, but then when I’m 14, I’m like, let’s maybe not. Let’s leave that where it’s at. But anyway, it’s just all the awkward years that normally isn’t documented on cable TV. But anyways, I was very excited to do a musical number and especially the musical number that I was given the opportunity to do did change me as a person and I couldn’t shake him off. I was for days to come walking different and talking different. Yeah, it was so fun.
How long did it take to rehearse and film?
Megan Park: Well, I mean, we were an indie movie, so we did not have endless time or resources to film this movie. We had an evening. A night to shoot that, to film it.
Maisy Stella: Yeah. I did one rehearsal with Maddie and Kerrice in a studio. It was a full-on dance studio with a mirror and the poles and everything. We rehearsed it. There was a choreographer who sent a video. Maddie and Kerrice learned it on their own time and then taught it to me properly. It was so fun.
Megan Park: You learned it very quickly.
Maisy Stella: It was quick. I mean, it was an easy dance. It’s not anything crazy.
Megan Park: I think I had to learn eight counts of dance in a movie once and I had 17 rehearsals so you say it like it’s easy, but yeah, for most people, not so easy. Musicians though, I will say, they tend to pick up dance and stuff faster. But also, as you said, you were quite literally born to do this.
Maisy Stella: Yeah. I love Bieber.
How collaborative was Margot Robbie as a producer on My Old Ass?
Megan Park: Margot is the dream producer. I mean, she’s so smart and had incredible thoughts and notes on the film from the very beginning. But what’s so wonderful about everyone at their company is that they’re really director-focused and each director needs something different. They were really able to quickly figure out what I needed support on, what I needed help with. They were on set, but not hovering over your shoulder, but hovering when you needed them. They’re very just naturally in tune.
It’s not a surprise to me that they get repeat business because they’re just such good people. I’ve worked with them now for three years and there’s just no cracks. They treat everybody the same on set from the PA to whoever. They don’t believe in hierarchy on a set. I don’t believe in hierarchy on a set. They really just want to make the best art possible. I’m doing my next movie with them and another project with them, which I think says it all. They’re just really wonderful, smart, incredible humans.
Megan, with The Fallout premiering during a virtual edition of SXSW, what was it like to get the full in-person festival experience for My Old Ass at Sundance?
Maisy Stella: Sundance was so beautiful.
Megan Park: Once in a lifetime. It was unbelievable.
Maisy Stella: I genuinely will never forget a single moment of Sundance.
Megan Park: It was insane. With The Fallout going to South by, it was incredible and we ended up winning three major awards there, which was surreal and unbelievable. I got a phone call from the festival director. I was in my backyard and she’s like, you won this and you won this and you won this. Congratulations. It’s like, thank you. They sent the awards in the mail and that was it. It never even really felt—I never to this day have seen that movie with the cast in a theater with a crowd.
Maisy Stella: It was never properly celebrated.
Megan Park: It was so wild so then to get the total opposite end of the spectrum with this movie going to Sundance, which was our dream home for the film, to get a standing ovation, to watch it in the theater with that many people and to feel that energy was surreal. Absolutely surreal. Everybody kept saying to me, this is the Sundance dream experience so soak it up because you never know if this is ever going to happen again. We were really trying to like savor it all.
Maisy Stella: It’s what The Fallout deserves. It’s a crime.
Megan Park: One day. We’ve talked about doing a double-feature screening. It would be so cool.
Maisy Stella: Oh my G-d. You have to do that.
Megan Park: To have the cast come. It would be really fun.
What do you hope people take away from watching My Old Ass?
Megan Park: I never went into it hoping there was one specific takeaway. I think it’s too scary to think about people even seeing the movie, let alone what are they going to take away?
Maisy Stella: Which is why I think people—it works. I feel like when you try to be like, this is going to be the message of it. I feel like it just happened to be what it was.
Megan Park: But I think for me in making it, the message was that time goes by really quickly and the older you get, time sort of becomes your worst enemy so savor it. Savor those moments and live in the moment, as cheesy as it sounds, but that really is life. That’s life. The greatest compliment we say is when people tell us after the movie, they got in the car and called their parent. They called their mom, they called their dad, or they called a sibling or something to just check in and say hi, I think is really beautiful.
Maisy Stella: Yeah, I think people are taking everything I could have ever hoped that they would take. I think the message is pretty warm and it’s pretty apparent. I think you do kind of just leave with the feeling of the message. We’ve seen so many different responses and reactions from different walks of life. There’s so many different types of people that are taking different things from it. It’s been really beautiful to see, but yeah, that’s the message that we took for sure.
Thank you so much.
Maisy Stella: Thank you. It was nice to meet you.
Megan Park: Have a good day.