Alison Brie on Making Out With Aubrey Plaza and the Strange, Sad Death of ‘GLOW’

“I’ve been feeling real brave!” exclaims Alison Brie.

The actress is currently filming Freelance in the Colombian jungle—an action-comedy that sees her intrepid journalist and the retired special forces operator (John Cena) acting as her security attempt to survive a military coup.

Dodging “new obstacles on set, like poisonous snails, scorpions and fire ants” sounds considerably less glamorous than the making of Spin Me Round, her scenic new film that made its premiere at this year’s SXSW.

Amber (Brie) is the manager of the Bakersfield outpost of Italian restaurant chain Tuscan Grove (think: Olive Garden). She is closed-off to the world, still recovering from a terrible breakup. When Amber’s chosen to go to an enrichment program in Italy for TG’s top managers, she feels it’s her chance at a fresh start. Before long, she’s fallen for Nick (Alessandro Nivola), the terribly attractive (and yacht-owning) Chef Boyardee of the Tuscan Grove empire and raising hell on the streets of Italy with his rascally assistant Kat (Aubrey Plaza). But things… are not as they seem.

Spin Me Round reunites director Jeff Baena (Plaza’s husband) with his regular players Brie (who co-wrote the film), Plaza, Molly Shannon, and Fred Armisen—along with Zach Woods, Ego Nwodim, Tim Heidecker, Debby Ryan, Ben Sinclair, and Lil Rel Howery. The film was shot in May 2021, and given the pandemic of it all, the sprawling cast became incredibly tight-knit, isolating and sharing meals together.

“It was like The Little Hours on steroids,” says Brie, referring to her, Baena and Plaza’s previous Italian sex romp. “It was a larger cast that was there the whole time, and because of the pandemic, it really did feel like this bubble. Our hotel was right in between Pisa and Lucca, and they were like ghost towns.”

Here, Brie opens up about the wild new film, Netflix’s cancellation of GLOW, and so much more.

I remember seeing The Little Hours at a midnight screening about five years ago. You all must have had a fun time filming that around Italy, because Spin Me Round is in a similar location and bring back much of the cast and creative team.

We had a blast shooting The Little Hours. It was especially fun for me to be there with my husband Dave [Franco], who’s in the movie, as well as Jeff [Baena] and Aubrey [Plaza]. And we have a lot of repeat offenders here, like Molly [Shannon] and Fred Armisen. But Jeff came up with the concept for this movie pretty much right after we finished The Little Hours, because he wanted to get back to Italy as soon as possible. There were some delays on that, and in the interim we made Horse Girl together. After that, Jeff brought it back around and said, “I’ve written a 10-page outline for this other Italy movie idea—do you want to write it with me?” The Little Hours and Horse Girl were unscripted—we worked off a 30-page outline—but for this movie, we fleshed it out into a 35-page outline and were gonna take it out like that, and then because of the pandemic and having so much time on our hands we ended up just writing the whole script. And then we had a fun time asking all our friends to be in it.

Was Spin Me Round inspired by Berlusconi’s infamous “bunga bunga” parties? Because without giving too much away, wild sex parties among the Italian elite play a role.

There were a lot of different references, but I think the thing we were playing with was the idea of unfulfilled expectation, and this American idea of what traveling abroad is—or can be. In a lot of people’s minds, it’s so romantic and Under the Tuscan Sun or you’re abducted and it’s like Taken. So, as the characters start to realize that the trip isn’t going the way that they imagined, and they try to embolden themselves and take control of their destiny a bit haphazardly, they’re kind of creating the movie they’re in.

The film is also a #MeToo allegory, since it’s about a male boss exploiting his female workers in a rather diabolical way.

Sure, it is about that. This is another trope of this genre—if this movie even falls into a genre, I’m not sure!—where characters in a type of murder-mystery movie think something’s going on and in the end everything’s OK. And in this movie, we liked the idea that in the end you’re like, “Oh… maybe it’s not as bad as we thought… but it’s not good! There’s still a lot of sinister things going on here.”

Have you ever had a total nightmare vacation? Is there one that really sticks out for you where everything that could go wrong did?

I’ve had some bizarre vacations. Nothing quite like this! One that comes to mind is going to Miami for a friend’s 30^th birthday and her parents had gotten a big yacht. On the day of it she got so sick with this stomach flu and we all just made her go on the boat anyway, and the whole night—this sounds more like her horror story than my horror story—but it was just so sad, and definitely a trip that went awry. Our friend was on the boat wrapped in a blanket with a party hat on and everyone else felt like, “We’re gonna party way harder to make up for the fact that you can’t party—but, like, in your face!”

This sounds like an incredible Below Deck episode.

[Laughs] Yeah. It was so weird!

I heard that you met your husband [Dave Franco] during a weekend in Mardi Gras, and that you kept your silver Mardi Gras mask on the entire weekend.

Yes, disgustingly so!

There’s a moment in Spin Me Round where you open a drawer and find similar-looking Mardi Gras masks. Was that a sly nod to your and Dave’s origin story?

God, no, not at all. First of all, those masks are much nicer than this plastic silver mask I was wearing when Dave and I met—and that he later used to propose to me—but no. It was really more of a nod to Eyes Wide Shut and actual Lucca porn, which is a real thing.

How did you come to be wearing that silver Mardi Gras mask the entire weekend you met Dave? Was that your way of seeming mysterious, as Dave has suggested?

No! [Laughs] Look, I’ve been to Mardi Gras a couple times, and the inebriation level is so high, who’s to say where you’re acquiring beads and masks and headbands. There’s just so much garbage lining the city that you pick up along the way. And to be clear: I wasn’t wearing the mask full Zorro-style the whole weekend. It was more like, I got the mask and then just had it at half-mast on my head for days. It was so gross. And then I did write my phone number on it and leave it in Dave’s bag, so I turned it into a romantic gesture of my own—and then he [wore it] again when he proposed to me years later. And now we have it hanging up in our kitchen.

This sounds like a way sweeter version of the end of Eyes Wide Shut where the mask is sitting on the pillow.

[Laughs] Yeah, totally! It has a nice note—and there’s no horrible music playing.

How did you guys find out about Lucca porn? It’s not a particularly well-known genre stateside.

I have to hand it to Jeff who… did the investigating on that, and he enlightened me about it. I did try to google it a couple of times, more so when we were debating what everyone’s wardrobe would be in [redacted spoiler], but beyond that, I just took Jeff’s word for it and didn’t do too much of my own investigating. I’m not sure how he knows about it! Except we did shoot The Little Hours near Lucca, and we were close to Lucca again this trip, so maybe it’s just information you pick up on the streets.

One of the most exciting sequences of the film involves you and Aubrey Plaza raising hell on the streets of Italy—conning a top Italian chef out of a meal, getting into a nightclub brawl, and then hooking up in a dark alley. How fun was that to film? And was it awkward at all because you’re all friends and it’s technically Aubrey’s husband directing you two hooking up?

It very much was Jeff filming Aubrey and I making out in an alley. [Laughs] No, there really wasn’t a moment like that. In The Little Hours, Aubrey shoots a sex scene with my husband Dave, so really this was like a full-circle moment. When the scene came, I was like, “Have we not shot a scene where we’ve made out before?” and Aubrey was like, “What? No!” and I was like, “Oh… well it’s about time!” But those were some of my favorite nights of shooting. We cut it from the film—but we kept it for the poster—where we steal a Vespa and Aubrey was driving me around the streets of Lucca on a Vespa in the middle of the night. The city had closed down and it was really beautiful. It was so fun. Aubrey is an incredible actress, and we have such great chemistry, that it was actually the opposite of what you described. I felt like it was very natural to shoot those scenes, and it was a fun portion of the movie for my character, who’s very out of touch with her own instincts—romantically, sexually, in life—and doesn’t assert herself ever. This is the one moment in the movie where she’s present in her emotions and acting on impulse in a way that’s true to herself.

Speaking of wild stories, I understand that you worked as a clown at kids’ birthday parties before hitting it big. What was the weirdest thing that happened during your clown tenure?

Gosh, I don’t know! It sort of ran the gamut. I can’t think of one particularly weird story, but I didn’t just work as a clown—I also did characters. I had strange encounters with mild sexual harassment when I’d be playing a Powerpuff Girl. I would wear a giant head with a chinstrap and then a tiny miniskirt-onesie costume, and just get hit on by dads. It was so weird because of the head. I was like, you’re really just looking at my legs and butt.

And the Powerpuff Girl of it all. That character is a young girl in, like, kindergarten.

Yeah! It’s a children’s cartoon starring… children’s cartoons. So, that was weird. I think my worst character was Cinderella, which I only did one time. I had to wear this really jacked, blonde wig that was already up in a bun and didn’t quite fit my head so you could see my brown hair underneath. The kids were like, “You’re not Cinderella! Your hair is brown!” and because I was still in Los Angeles, I convinced them all, “Cinderella is not a natural blonde, you guys! I dye my hair. What do you think? These are just my roots.” And by the end of the party, one of the kids had arrived late and was like, “That’s not Cinderella! Look at her hair!” and all the other kids turned on him and were like, “Yes, it is! Cinderella dyes her roots!” and I was like, “Oh my God… what have I done.”

You know, a lot of people have been revisiting classic shows during the pandemic, and Mad Men is one of them. It must be cool to be associated with such a cherished show and I’m curious what some of your lasting memories are from your time on it.

Oh wow. It really was an incredible experience—and it was very early in my career, so for me it was a real learning experience. This is not an experience that happened while I was shooting Mad Men, but my favorite Mad Men-related incident is when I was working on the movie The Post with Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. I didn’t really have a lot of scenes with Tom Hanks, but we were on set a few days together, and every time I saw him on set, he was such a big Mad Men fan, he was like, “Oh my god! I’m so happy to meet you! Trudy is such an amazing character!” And every time we were on set together, he’d come into the makeup trailer and go, “Here’s your morning foam! The scene where”—he’d name a very specific scene— “the guys are meeting and they’re debating starting their own company, and in walks Trudy and she’s wearing an amazing hat and a cape, and she’s bringing baked goods. Incredible.” He’d just give me these random Mad Men compliments and it really did make my day! So, what an honor to know that work you’ve done has been enjoyed by people that you admire.

Speaking of excellent work that you’ve done, I was a huge fan of GLOW. Obviously, it suffered an untimely demise despite its excellent critical reception, devoted fans, and awards recognition. I’m curious what it was like to process that cancellation and also reuniting with the GLOW team for the upcoming series Roar?

It was a bummer, man!

Is that a Lebowski reference?

[Laughs] Yeah. It was really difficult to process it because of the pandemic and the circumstances. We were a really tight group, the cast and the crew on that show. It’s my favorite job I’ve ever done, and it changed my life in a lot of ways. All the women on the show were so inspiring to me, and we really felt like a sports team a lot of the time. (Although take that with a grain of salt because I’ve never been on a sports team.) From the very beginning, as we all learned to wrestle together and do everything on the show together, that [ending] was something we didn’t go through together. We all got on a Zoom together and cried and laughed and had that moment, but that was the toughest part about it. If we had gotten the information on set together that would have been almost easier to process versus being so distanced and quarantined separately. Also, everyone was having a really different life experience in that moment. Black Lives Matter was at such a height, and emotions were high with so many of the women in our cast, that we were already having discussions about the impact of that on everybody. And then there was COVID itself. Everyone was devastated, but it was so hard not to have physical touch, which was such a big part of that job for all of us. We knew each other so intimately—the show is about bodies and being together—so not being together for that was really hard.

Why the Hell Did Netflix Have to Cancel ‘GLOW’?CLOSURE

Laura Bradley, Melissa Leon

It had a delayed effect, too, where everything about COVID felt so surreal, so even that happening seemed so bizarre. Two days ago, somebody posted a picture on Instagram from the first episode that we shot for Season 4 that no one will ever see, and it was just devastating again. It broke open the wound to think, yeah, there was a lot of great stuff planned for Season 4 that we’ll never get to do. But Roar was an incredible experience, and I think for me—and maybe for Betty Gilpin as well—that became a source of great closure. Even though the cast wasn’t there, a big portion of our crew were there, including our showrunners Liz [Flahive] and Carly [Mensch]. It was so gratifying to be able to see them again and also our sound guys, and our first AD, and Anya Adams, who directed my episode of Roar, also directed an episode of GLOW, and I’ve known her since Community. It felt fun to see everybody one more time and say our goodbyes in person. And then it didn’t feel so much like goodbyes but see ya laters.