Aubrey Plaza Talks Navigating ‘Grief’ Following Husband Jeff Baena’s Suicide: ‘It’s a Daily Struggle’

Aubrey Plaza is speaking candidly about navigating life following the loss of husband Jeff Baena.

Plaza, 41, appeared on the Tuesday, August 19, episode of Amy Poehler’s “Good Hang with Amy Poehler” podcast, where the host kicked off their conversation by making it clear fans were interested in knowing how the Honey Don’t! actress was doing following the director’s death by suicide in January.

“To get it out of the way, people want to see you and see how you are,” Poehler, 53, began, as she reached for her former Parks and Recreation co-star’s hand. “They love you, and they want to see you.”

“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, and I think, on behalf of all the people who feel like they know you, and the people who do know you, how are you feeling today?” Poehler asked.

“Right in this very, very present moment, I feel happy to be with you,” Plaza explained. “Overall, I’m here and I’m functioning. I feel, you know, I feel really grateful to be moving through the world.”

“I’m OK,” she continued. “It’s a daily struggle, obviously.”

Plaza used The Gorge, a 2025 science fiction film starring Miles Teller and Anya-Taylor Joy, as an example to describe her emotions.

“In the movie, there’s a cliff on one side and a cliff on the other side, and there’s a gorge in between, and it’s filled with all these monster people that are trying to get them,” she shared. “And like, 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 just, awfulness that’s, like, right there, and I can see it, and sometimes I just want to dive into it and be in it,” she admitted. “And then, sometimes, I just look at it, and sometimes I just try to get away from it. But it’s always there. It’s always there.”

In 2021, Plaza announced that she and Baena had married after a decade together by sharing a photo of the pair on Instagram, and referring to the screenwriter as her husband.

As Star previously reported, the couple had been separated for four months when Baena died at the age of 47. At the time, Plaza was living in New York City while he was residing at their home in Los Angeles.

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