Adam Scott Reveals Disturbing Note Aubrey Plaza Passed Him After His First ‘Parks and Rec’ Board Read

On December 24, 2024By Littum

Leave it to the Plaza to make a new cast member feel welcome in the most welcoming way possible.

Why be boring and welcome someone to the cast of your show with a gift basket when you could give them a cheeky little note?

That’s exactly how it is Aubrey Plaza commemorated on the occasion of Adam Scott to join Parks and Recreation cast after his first table reading. “I remember reading at the end of the table that I breathed a sigh of relief,” Scott revealed in Jim O’Heirs new book Welcome to Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles, and Parks and Recreation. But then, “Aubrey came up to me and handed me a note folded very tightly.”

“Do you remember the movie Shutter Island where Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo go to the mental hospital and I think somebody gives them a note?” Scott continues. “At the time, it was a famous moment that had just happened in a famous movie — and Aubrey’s note said ‘Run,’ just like in the movie . It was a perfect welcome message.”

Colleen Hayes/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Aubrey Plaza and Adam Scott on 'Parks and Recreation' — Colleen Hayes/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty

Aubrey Plaza and Adam Scott on ‘Parks and Recreation’

You don’t have to know Plaza well to know her unique blend of craziness and deadpan humor. Not to mention her love for teasing. But it takes a mind as open as Scott’s not to be at least a little intimidated by an actor comfortable in his lead role on a network sitcom warning you to scram before you even have recorded your first scene. Even though it was clearly meant in jest, given its context in the zeitgeist.

Fortunately, Scott was “a huge fan of the show, an avid watcher of it” when he was called to audition, so he was more than familiar with Plaza, who Parker show runner Michael Schur calls in an “agent of chaos”. Welcome to Pawnee.

*Earl Gibson/Shutterstock Aubrey Plaza, Amy Poehler and Adam Scott*

Scott remembers “hearing about this Office spinoff for a while, and I think it was a year before I actually auditioned that I told my agent I wanted to be a part of it.” At the time, he had just finished to shoot the second season of the Starz comedy Party downand was unsure how much to believe the rumors that the show would be cancelled. He also “originally auditioned for Mark”, the character he played for two seasons Paul Schneider.

Once he had it on good authority Party down was not in the process of a third season and that Schur and Parker creates Greg Daniels having a new character in mind for him, Scott set course for the Pawnee and sailed full steam.

Scott aced his audition with ease and was awarded the plum role of Ben Wyatt, the boring state auditor and former child mayor who becomes the show’s primary paramour for showrunner Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler).

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In a 2011 interview with GQScott revealed that he “actually auditioned for the show before it was even on the air” but “kind of blew it.” His first audition was for a character named Josh, who was designed as a love interest for Rashida Jones‘s Ann. That role probably evolved into Mark acting as Ann’s main squeeze, and who Scott confirms he’s auditioning for in Welcome to Pawnee.

In a fascinating bit Parker lore, Nick Offermanwho eventually landed the lead role of Ron Swanson, the Parks Department’s troubled director, also auditioned for Josh when he revealed in his 2015 memoir Paddle your own canoe. It’s hard to imagine one Parks and Recreation without Scott, with Offerman as Mark, and Schneider nowhere to be found.