Actress Aubrey Plaza has opened up about dealing with grief following the tragic loss of her husband, Jeff Baena, whom she had been with for 14 years.
Baena passed away in January
Screenwriter and director Jeff Baena passed away on January 3, 2025 when he tragically took his own life.
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A medical report from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner stated that he and Plaza had been separated for four months before his passing, citing that they had been ‘experiencing recent marital difficulties.’
Plaza opened up about the tragedy
Shortly after Baena’s death, Plaza said in a statement that it was ‘an unimaginable tragedy’ to endure.
Now, she’s spoken to Amy Poechler on her podcast Good Hang in an episode uploaded on Tuesday, August 19.
Poechler asked her how she was handling things
The host asked Plaza how she was doing after having lost her husband in January of this year.
Poechler said, “Just to get it out the way, people want to see you and want to see how you are, they love you.”
The host sympathized with Plaza
“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,” Poechler said.
Plaza said it’s a ‘daily struggle’
Plaza responded, “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 added.
She compared her grief to a movie
Plaza went on to compare her grief in losing her husband to the movie, The Gorge, an alien movie starring Miles Teller.
She explained, “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.”
It feels just like that to her
“I swear when I watched it, I was like that feels like what my grief is like … or what grief could be like,” Plaza said.
The 41-year-old added that it can often feel like ‘there’s a giant ocean of awfulness’ that she can see and ‘sometimes I just want to dice into it and be in it.’
She tries to fight it but recognizes it’s there
Plaza admitted, “Sometimes I just look at it, and sometimes I try to get away from it. But, it’s always there.”
Aubrey Plaza and Jeff Baena had been together for 14 years, during which they collaborated on multiple film projects like The Little Hours, Joshy, and Life After Beth.
