This is the third of Cosmo’s eight 2022 issues — a new, themed, cost-cutting, print-is-still-super-broke approach they announced in February with Sydney Sweeney’s issue — and the Holy Grail idea is meant to invoke dreaming and striving and going for it all. But I cannot be the only person who hoped for, say, a profile of a killer bunny as written by There Are Those Who Call Me… Tim (the character, OR our commenter of the same name; I’m not picky), or a sweeping spread of the Castle of Aaargh’s interiors, or a tutorial from Roger on how to arrange, design, and sell shrubberies. Zoot, the sex-positive icon of her time, can interview the guy Lancelot basically refused to rescue. Learn how to build your own Trojan Bunny, and enjoy a wildly informative spread on swallows. And you know about the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, but you won’t BELIEVE what’s among the OTHER holy relics Brother Maynard carries. That’s easily a five-page spread — wait, no, three.
Jessica Pels said the goal of these issues is to be stacked with pride on people’s coffee tables, a thing I cannot relate to personally because I only keep magazines there if I am willfully forgetting to recycle them. I could see this one looking very good in somebody’s mod living room, though, because the pictures and styling have a slick ’60s caper feel to them, and Aubrey does it all very well. I enjoyed the interview, and you can tell both of them did too. Aubrey has really interesting taste in projects, and she’s shooting the second season of The White Lotus in Sicily (!), so there’s an obligatory, if brief, Jennifer Coolidge reference herein. The part that made me laugh, though, was this:
I’ve heard more than once that I’m intimidating, that I’m on the offensive all the time, but I’m not. I’ve said things to certain people here on-set where they clearly thought I was fucking with them. […] This guy, not going to name names, but I heard that he ordered turkey from the hotel. This is such a dumb story. But I was thinking, Oh, I wonder if that was any good, and I saw him at the bar and I was like, “Hey, how was that turkey you ate?” I meant it genuinely, like I want to know if it’s good and if I should get it. But then he looked at me and immediately started doing some weird bit. He wouldn’t give me a straight answer and just assumed that I was shaming him for ordering turkey. I was like, “Bro, I just wanted to know if it was good.”
I can one hundred percent imagine Aubrey Plaza asking this question, and 100 percent imagine interpreting it as if the question is coming from April Ludgate, with a dark tinge to it, and feeling self-conscious. I’m sure it’s hard when people identify you so readily with a dry, sarcastic character like April, and Aubrey does have a bit of Resting Snark Face (this is not an insult; I like her face). We only got to use two of the photos other than the cover, but I highly recommend reading the piece and enjoying the other pictures, because I had a hard time picking which ones I wanted to run. She carries the theme very well.
