Aubrey Plaza Shares the Advice She’d Give Her Younger Self: ‘Can We Just Up the Hydration?’ (Exclusive)

The Emmy nominee and her 'My Old Ass' costar Maisy Stella talk to PEOPLE about the coming of age dramedy

If Aubrey Plaza could go back in time, she’d drink a lot more water.

Asked the advice she’d like give her younger self, the White Lotus Emmy nominee, 40, tells PEOPLE, “I would really focus on skin care. Hydration. I'd be like — can we just up the hydration?”

(She’d also show young Aubrey how to properly wash her hair: “I thought you had to leave the shampoo on for a couple minutes,” Plaza admits.)

The hydration tip is similar to the advice Plaza’s character imparts in the new coming of age dramedy My Old Ass. When college-bound Elliott (Maisy Stella) gets high on a mushroom trip with her friends, she’s visited by her future, 39-year-old self (Plaza).

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The older Elliott has plenty of things to tell teen Elliott: moisturize, wear your retainer, and avoid a guy named Chad (Wednesday's Percy Hynes White) at all costs.

And while Plaza is on board with the moisturizing advice, she doesn't agree with warning off a love interest.

"Everyone's got to kind of have those experiences, bad and good, because it makes you who you are," she says. "But I'm sure there's some people that maybe we could just lose from that equation."

She and Stella immediately fell in love with writer-director Megan Park’s original and bittersweet story.

“It was such an undeniably good script. I think anyone that read it just was inevitably in support of it being made and just wanted to be a part of it,” says Stella, who previously starred on the ABC/CMT series Nashville.

She was particularly thrilled to have Plaza — who joined the cast after Stella was already filming — play the older Elliott.

“I've never been so excited about anything in my entire life,” she says. “When Aubrey's name even came into the conversation, I was just really, really hoping [she’d so it] because I'm such a fan, and I just felt like the movie would be so much cooler.”

Park previously told PEOPLE she dreamed up the idea for the story when she was visiting her home in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I felt super nostalgic being back, I was so happy to be in such beautiful nature that I took for granted growing up,” she said. “It made me start to think about this idea of, if I could go back in time and relive my last summer at home or give my younger self advice, what would it be and it kind of just naturally snowballed from there.”

"I was also in the headspace like many people were during that time where I wanted to write something that was really joyful and a bit of an escape from the real world,” she added.

My Old Ass is in select theaters today before expanding in the coming weeks.

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