Aubrey Plaza has opened up for the first time about how she has been dealing with her grief following the suicide of her husband, Jeff Baena, earlier this year.
The White Lotus actress was asked how she was feeling on Tuesday’s episode of “Good Hang with Amy Poehler.”
“I mean, right in this very, very present moment, I feel happy to be with you,” Plaza replied to host and Parks and Rec co-star Amy Poehler. “I feel overall, I’m here and I’m functioning, and I feel, you know, like I feel really grateful to be moving through the world. I think I’m OK, but, you know, it’s like a daily struggle.”
Plaza, 41, compared her grief in—her words—“a really dumb analogy” to the 2025 action horror film The Gorge, starring Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy.
“In the movie, there’s a cliff on one side, and then there’s a cliff on the other side, and then there’s like gorge in between, and it’s filled with all these monster people that are trying to get them,” she said. “I swear, when I watched it, I was like, that feels like what my grief is like, or what grief could be.”
Plaza added that “at all times, there’s like a giant ocean of awfulness that’s like right there and I can see it, and sometimes I just want to like dive into it and be in it.”
“And then sometimes I just look at it, and then sometimes I’m like trying to get away from it, but it’s always there,” she continued. “It’s like always there, and the monster people are trying to get me, like Miles Teller.”
Baena, 47, a screenwriter and film director, died by suicide in January. The pair secretly married in 2021 after dating for more than a decade but separated in 2024. The couple was also professionally involved, collaborating on projects like Life After Beth, Joshy, The Little Hours, and Spin Me Round.
This is the first time the Honey Don’t! star has spoken publicly about Baena’s passing. Before then, the Plaza and Baena family requested privacy while they dealt with the “unimaginable tragedy” according to a statement to USA Today.
In her first public appearance since his death, Plaza wore a tie-dye shirt on SNL50, which fans quickly figured out was a tribute to her late husband. Plaza previously spoke on The Drew Barrymore Show to share that she got married in tie-dye pajamas.
“Jeff got really into tie-dyeing during the quarantine, so I decided that Jeff and I were going to wear tie-dye pajamas that he had made for us,” she said back in 2021.
If you or a loved one are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing or texting 988.
