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Aubrey Plaza revealed why filming X-rated film with real sex scene was a 'nightmare'

Home> Film & TV> News

Updated 15:06 6 Jun 2025 GMT+1Published 15:10 5 Jun 2025 GMT+1

Aubrey Plaza revealed why filming X-rated film with real sex scene was a 'nightmare'

The moment was her first sex scene in a movie

Niamh Shackleton

Niamh Shackleton

Featured Image Credit: TheStewartofNY/FilmMagic via Getty Images

Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, Entertainment

Niamh Shackleton
Niamh Shackleton

Niamh Shackleton is an experienced journalist for UNILAD, specialising in topics including mental health and showbiz, as well as anything Henry Cavill and cat related. She has previously worked for OK! Magazine, Caters and Kennedy.

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@niamhshackleton

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Aubrey Plaza recalled doing a real sex scene in a movie, and it sounded like she wasn't in any hurry to do it again afterwards.

Plaza has starred in dozens of film and TV shows over the course of career, with some of her best known work being in Parks and Recreation, Agatha All Along, and The White Lotus.

Another credit she has is for the 2013 movie The To Do List which also starred Bill Hader, Rachel Bilson, Andy Samberg, and Superbad favorite Christopher Mintz-Plasse.

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In the X-rated movie, Plaza's character Brandy Klark has a moment of self pleasure. Filming this was the first sex scene she'd done, and little did Plaza know that she actually had to perform the act on herself.

Aubrey Plaza had film a masturbation scene in one of her movies (Lionel Hahn/Getty Images)
Aubrey Plaza had film a masturbation scene in one of her movies (Lionel Hahn/Getty Images)

She said doing the scene was a 'nightmare'. Further speaking to The Sunday Times about the risqué movie, Plaza said: "I was like, this is the weirdest acting job I’ve ever had in my life."

Plaza went on to praise The To Do List director Maggie Carey for 'sensitive to things that maybe a male director wouldn’t be sensitive to'.

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Meanwhile Carey gushed over Plaza and said that the actor was 'game for anything', prioritizing comedy over vanity.

Plaza also discussed filming this particular scene with Conan O'Brien and recalled being told by Carey to 'masturbate, like it says in the script'.

"When I showed up, the camera was mounted on the ceiling, I was in my underwear and a Clinton T-shirt and there were a bunch of old men smoking. You know, the crew guys," Plaza shared.

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They weren't actually smoking, but that's how the Monsters University actor imagined it.

"Then I went and touched myself," she continued. "I thought I was doing one thing and then, when I showed up, it was a whole different thing; it was a full-body shot."

While Plaza seemingly wouldn't rush to film such a scene again, she wouldn't say no to a Parks and Rec reboot.

Plaza played the lead of Brandy in The To Do List (CBS Films)
Plaza played the lead of Brandy in The To Do List (CBS Films)

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"I mean, I will do whatever Amy Poehler wants to do," she told UNILAD when posed with the question last year.

"I do whatever she does. If she's in, I'm in. If she's out, I'm out," Plaza went on to say of Inside Out star Poehler.

Fellow Parks and Rec star Rashida Jones has echoed similar sentiments in a separate interview with us.

Jones said of reuniting with her former co-stars: "Oh, anytime, any day. I mean, we all are still friends, we text. I talk to Amy [Poehler] every day.

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"If there's a reason and somebody says, ‘Let's do it’, I think every single one of us would say yes."

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