Aubrey Plaza's Insightful Analogy About Grief After Her Husband's Death Is Hitting Home For People

*The following article contains discussion of suicide/self-harm.

In January, actor Aubrey Plaza lost her partner of 14 years and husband of four years, writer and director Jeff Baena, to suicide. The actor has maintained her privacy since then, but opened up about her grief with her former Parks and Recreation costar Amy Poehler.

Appearing on Pohler's podcast Good Hang, Plaza addressed how she felt in the wake of her loss after the host broke the ice.

Poehler began by saying:

"To just get it out of the way, people want to see you and want to see how you are. They love you. They love you, and they want to see you."

The actor continued:

"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?"

Plaza replied:

"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 OK, but it’s like a daily struggle, obviously."

Trying to contextualize how she feels, Plaza brought up the 2025 horror/thriller film The Gorge, an AppleTV project starring Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy.

Plaza asked Poehler:

"This is a really dumb analogy and it was kind of a joke at a certain point, but I actually mean it. Did you see that movie 'The Gorge'?"

The actor gave a synopsis of the film's premise, saying:

"It’s like [an] alien movie or something with Miles Teller. In the movie, there’s like a cliff on one side and there’s a cliff on the other side, then there’s a gorge in between and it’s filled with all these like monster people that are trying to get them."

Plaza added:

"I swear when I watched it, I was like that feels like what my grief is like…or what grief could be like, where at all times, there’s a giant ocean of awfulness, that’s, like, right there, and I can see it."

"Sometimes I just want to dive into it, and just be in it. Then sometimes I just look at it, and sometimes I try to get away from it. But it’s always there, and the monster people are trying to get me—like Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy."

People found it to be a very apt analogy for how grief feels, and they sent love to Plaza.

The rest of the podcast appearance was about how Plaza first fell in love with the art of comedy, the two actors' work together on Parks and Recreation, and Plaza's other projects, like Agatha All Along for Disney+.

At the end—during a segment called the "Poehler Plunge"—the host highlighted the films Plaza made with Baena: Life After Beth, Joshy, and The Little Hours.

You can watch the full hour-long podcast here:

youtu.be

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If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.

To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://findahelpline.com/i/iasp.