Aubrey Plaza has built much of her screen persona around playing characters who are awkward, offbeat, or a little out of sync with everyone else—going back to early work like Mystery Team and, most famously, her breakout as April Ludgate on Parks and Recreation.
That dry, unpredictable delivery—plus her comfort with improvisation—has helped her land roles across film and television over the past 17 years. One of those projects paired her with Robert De Niro in the comedy Dirty Grandpa.
Plaza has said her willingness to fully commit to the movie’s deliberately outrageous tone sometimes had an unintended side effect: it made her legendary co-star feel uneasy.
In the film, her character is intensely fixated on De Niro’s much older character, and a lengthy shoot for an intimate scene apparently became an especially strange day on set—particularly when Plaza leaned hard into the bit while cameras were rolling.
“There was a lot of interesting stuff that went down, you know,” she said in a 2016 interview with Jimmy Kimmel, describing a 10-hour shoot where the actors took frequent direction and adjustments from the filmmaker.
Some of those choices worked better than others.
Plaza recalled one moment that crossed into uncomfortable territory, saying: “I’d try to get in there and suck on his nipples, and he was like batting me away, and I didn’t know if it was in character or not.”
From that, she said she learned that ‘Bob does not like his nipple area paid attention to,’ and later joked: “Great, now he thinks that I wanted to do that.”
She also explained that she and De Niro didn’t really spend time together between takes, meaning most of their interaction happened while she was playing the character. “I heard from my agent, who had spoken to his agent that he was legitimately scared of me,” she told Kimmel.
Adding: “Every time I was around him, it was right before we started shooting, so I would be all over him, and I think I really freaked him out.”
Years later, in a 2022 interview with Variety, Plaza expanded on how unusual that working relationship felt, explaining: “I didn’t really have a relationship with him off camera because he’s him.
“I didn’t have time to get to know him, he shows up in a puff of smoke and there’s no chatting at the water cooler.”
Plaza described De Niro as a larger-than-life presence who seemed to arrive, film, and disappear—while she, by contrast, was already fully dialed into a character with a very specific (and aggressive) objective.
As she put it: “By the time he’d show up, I’m in character. My character had one goal: To have sex with him. I was acting totally insane as the character because we were about to shoot. I don’t think he understood that wasn’t me.
“You’d think he would because he’s an actor and an amazing one.”
She also suggested the confusion seemed to vanish once filming ended. Plaza remembered attending a party after shooting and said De Niro didn’t immediately recognize her out of context: “I showed up and he’s like, ‘Who are you sweetheart?’ and after that he was normal.
“At first I think I came on really strong. I did some questionable things I wouldn’t do anymore.”