‘A giant ocean of awfulness’: Aubrey Plaza opens up about losing her husband to suicide

Aubrey Plaza went through one of the worst ordeals imaginable this year, as her husband Jeff Baena tragically died by suicide on January 3rd. The pair had been married since 2021, and Baena had previously directed Aubrey Plaza in a couple of her movies. He was best known for his movies Life After Beth, The Little Hours and his last film Spin Me Round – which starred Plaza and was released posthumously. Aubrey Plaza has just appeared on her friend and former co-star Amy Poehler’s podcast and opened up about how she’s coping through her grief after what her and her family described as an “unimaginable tragedy” – and it’s so heartbreaking to hear an actor we know as being such a force for comedy having to go through such a horrific bout of sadness with the loss of her husband.

She compared her grief to this 2025 movie

Aubrey Plaza opens up about losing her husband this year on Amy Poehler’s ‘Good Hang’ podcast. pic.twitter.com/tKsQpCoN37

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) August 19, 2025

Speaking on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast, the Parks and Recreation stars discussed how Aubrey Plaza was coping with the grief of losing her husband eight months on from the tragedy.

“Right in this very, very present moment, I feel happy to be with you,” Plaza said. “Overall, I’m here and I’m functioning. I feel really grateful to be moving through the world. I think I’m OK, but it’s like a daily struggle, obviously.”

In the interview, Aubrey Plaza used the 2025 Apple movie The Gorge, starring Miles Teller and Anya Taylor Joy as an analogy for her grief. She described the analogy as “really dumb”, but I found it very moving and resonant.

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“It’s like an alien movie with Miles Teller,” she said. “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. I swear when I watched it, I was like, ‘That what this 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. And sometimes, I just want to dive into it and be in it. And then sometimes, I just look at it. And then sometimes, I’m just trying 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.”

Aubrey Plaza and Jeff Baena met in 2011, and he became her husband in 2021.

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