Aubrey Plaza addressed how she has been doing following the death of her husband, Jeff Baena, earlier this year, on the Aug. 19 episode of “Good Hang with Amy Poehler.”
Plaza’s former “Parks and Recreation” co-star started the podcast episode asking how the “Honey Don’t!” actor was doing.
“Well, I mean, just to get it out of the way, people want to see you. I want to see how you are. They love you. I know they love you, and I want to see you,” Poehler said.
“So you’ve had this terrible, terrible, tragic year. You’ve 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,” she continued. “And I think I would, on behalf of all the people who feel like they know you and the people who do know you: How are you feeling today?”
Plaza then spoke about her journey in grief, about seven months after Baena died by suicide.
“I mean, right in this very, very present moment, I feel happy to be with you,” she said. “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 compared how she feels to the 2025 horror movie “The Gorge,” starring Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy.
“It’s like an alien movie, or something, with Miles Teller. 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,” Plaza described. “I swear, when I watched it, I was like, that feels like what my grief is like, or what grief could be.
“Where it’s like — at all times there’s a giant ocean of just awfulness that’s right there, and I can see it,” she continued. “Sometimes I just want to just dive into it and just be in it, and then sometimes I just look at it. And then sometimes I just try to get away from it, but it’s always there. It’s just always there. And the monster people are trying to get me, like, Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy.”
Baena died at age 47 in his Los Angeles home Jan. 3, according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner.
Plaza, along with Baena’s family, released a statement about his death Jan. 6.
“This is an unimaginable tragedy. We are deeply grateful to everyone who has offered support,” the statement said. “Please respect our privacy during this time.”
Baena was a director and screenwriter who often collaborated with his wife, including on projects like “Life After Beth,” “The Little Hours” and “Spin Me Round.”
The pair mostly kept their relationship private, but Plaza revealed in 2021 they had tied the knot after more than a decade of dating.
The actor referred to Baena as her “darling husband” in the caption of a May 2021 Instagram post, according to E! News, though she has since deleted her account.
In December 2021, Plaza shared how she and Baena got married during the pandemic on “The Drew Barrymore Show.”
“The marriage thing was just a joke that honestly just went too far,” Plaza said.
Plaza said that they got “married on a whim” and added that they had a ceremony less than four hours after they decided to get married.
“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 explained.
“I made a love altar in the backyard of all of our love objects. It was very witchcore, but it happened,” she added.
Plaza wore a tie-dye shirt to introduce a musical performance at “SNL50” on Feb. 16, her first public appearance since Baena’s death.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional support.
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
