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The life of Emily, the titular character in Emily the Criminal, played by Aubrey Plaza, isn't so different from the life lived by thousands of other Americans. Saddled with $70,000 in debt from student loans (plus interest), she's working a thankless job doing deliveries for a catering company to pay rent in an apartment she shares with roommates who don't even acknowledge her.
One thing that sets Emily apart from the average American, though, is her burgeoning talent for credit card fraud. Lured in by the initial promise of quick and easy money, Emily soon finds herself in the depths of Los Angeles' criminal underworld under the guidance of Youcef (Sons of Anarchy's Theo Rossi). And as she gradually unravels, she reaches new levels of desperation and the fraudulent credit card bills get higher and higher.
"Emily does and says all the things that we want to do and say, but we don't," Plaza, who also acts a producer, tells Total Film. "She just makes really extreme decisions that normal people would probably be too scared to make, and she stands up for herself and fights back. There's something really cathartic about watching her character do that stuff, and it's really fun to play because you get to live in fantasy land and feel her power in those moments."
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Plaza worked closely with first-time writer-director John Patton Ford to bring his script to life. "We're fortunate, we have really similar visions," Ford says. "You don't always know how that's gonna go – some people read a script and they see something totally different than what you see. The script is something to be interpreted, and I was fortunate in the sense that Aubrey saw the same movie, and did from the word 'go', and then we just were aligned throughout the whole thing. It was great. I think she spoiled me."
Plaza, who rose to fame playing April Ludgate in the sitcom Parks and Recreation, says she fell in love with the script as soon as she read it. "The script is a lot like the movie where it has this energy to it. It's a really just excellent script," she says. "The writing is so good and there's just so much nuance to all the characters. Everything feels so real. The momentum of the story goes at a pace that you just can't stop. It's never boring. I read it so fast. It's a really tense, exciting script, just like the movie."
Emily's story starts at rock bottom – we meet her mid-job interview when her potential employer puts her on the spot over a past felony, trying to deliberately trick her into revealing the details, and she storms out of the room. It was, Ford says, "perverse fun" to write the character. "I think I've spent a lot of my life frustrated and working jobs I didn't like and being in debt," he adds, "and so, to create a character who can be a hero for me – my own hero to follow – was especially gratifying and fun and perverse."
Ford plotted the story with a male character at first, but "it just wasn't very exciting." "It felt kind of familiar, the stakes felt lower," he continues. "I wasn't like, 'Alright, let's just try female', it wasn't arbitrary like that. It was more like I had the idea for Emily's character specifically and thought that would be interesting. From that point on, I never thought about the character in terms of gender. I just thought about it in terms of 'Who is this individual? What would that person do? What would this unique person do under these circumstances?' I'm not licensed to go: 'What's the female perspective?' I'm never going to know the answer to that question in a real way."
By the movie's final frame, there's a feeling of cyclical, almost queasy inevitability to it. It seems, ultimately, that this is a story about the individualism intrinsic to life under capitalism – that no one can survive in this world without prioritizing themselves over anyone else. Yet, Ford and Plaza have a more optimistic take.
"The ending, to me, it's a success story, in a weird way," Ford explains. "That's the story that I was telling, about someone discovering who they really are deep down and what their talents really are and what actually makes them feel happy, and then we see her committing to that fully and how that pays off. Take the crime out of it, take the societal judgment out of it, that's what I was getting at."
Plaza adds: "For me, it's a story about someone coming into their power and getting their power back. There is an inevitability to the end, but I don't know if it's bleak. I think it's more like she discovers who she really is, and she becomes her own boss in a way, despite all the obstacles that she's been facing, and so I also see it as a success story, even though under the circumstances it can feel bleak or sad, just really in the environment that we're living in. But as a character, it's hopeful."
Emily the Criminal is available to rent and own from October 24. For more viewing inspiration, check out our guide to the rest of this year's movie release dates.
