Aubrey Plaza is sharing how she’s been coping amid an incredibly difficult year.
Seven months after the passing of her husband, filmmaker Jeff Baena, the 40-year-old actress opened up during an appearance on Good Hang, the podcast hosted by her Parks and Recreation co-star Amy Poehler.
Jeff, who was just 47, died in early January, and his cause of death was ruled a suicide. The couple had married in 2021, but reports later revealed they were separated at the time of his passing. Still, Aubrey has continued to honor his memory while navigating her grief.
Amy addressed the subject head-on during the conversation: “Just to get it out the way, people want to see you and want to see how you are, they love you. You’ve had this terrible, terrible, tragic year. You lost your husband, you’ve been dealing with that and you’ve been looking for all different ways in which to feel and find support. On behalf of all the people who feel like they know you, and the people who do know you, how are you feeling today?”
Aubrey admitted her emotions change day to day. “Right in this very, very present moment, I feel happy to be with you. Overall, I’m here and I’m functioning. I feel really grateful to be moving through the world. I think I’m okay, but it’s like a daily struggle, obviously,” she shared.
She even compared grief to something out of a movie. “This is a really dumb analogy and it was kind of a joke at a certain point, but I actually mean it. Did you see that movie The Gorge? It’s like [an] alien movie or something with Miles Teller. In the movie, there’s like a cliff on one side and there’s a cliff on the other side, then there’s gorge in between and it’s filled with all these like monster people that are trying to get them.”
Aubrey said the film, which stars Anya Taylor-Joy and is streaming on Apple TV, unexpectedly captured what grief feels like for her. “I swear when I watched it, I was like that feels like what my grief is like … or what grief could be like. At all times there’s like a giant ocean of awfulness, that’s like right there and I can see it. Sometimes I just want to dive into it, and just like be in it. Then sometimes I just look at it, and sometimes I try to get away from it. But, it’s always there.”
Through it all, Aubrey is still working, still creating, and still moving forward. Her honesty about the messiness of grief is a reminder that healing isn’t linear—it’s a daily practice, one she’s navigating with remarkable vulnerability.
