Aubrey Plaza frequently collaborated with her late husband Jeff Baena, a writer and director.Lewis Joly/The Canadian Press
Aubrey Plaza has described her grief over husband Jeff Baena’s death, likening it to “a giant ocean of awfulness.”
The actor spoke on the podcast Good Hang with Amy Poehler, telling her former Parks and Recreation co-star in her most detailed public remarks to date that it’s been a daily struggle to overcome her grief. Writer-director Baena’s January death at age 47 was ruled a suicide.
“Overall, I’m here and I’m functioning,” Plaza tells Poehler at the outset of their interview after being asked how she is coping. “I feel really grateful to be moving through the world. I think I’m OK. But it’s like a daily struggle, obviously.”
She likens her grief to an image from an Apple TV+ horror movie starring Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy.
“Did you see that movie The Gorge?” Plaza asks Poehler. “In the movie, there’s a cliff on one side and then there’s a cliff on the other side, and there’s a gorge in between, and its filled with all these monster people trying to get them,” Plaza says. “And I swear when I watched it I was like, ‘That feels like what my grief is like,’ or what grief could be like … where it’s like at all times, there’s a giant ocean of awfulness that’s right there and I can see it.”
Plaza adds: “And sometimes I just want to dive into it, and just be in it, and sometimes I just look at it. And then sometimes I try to get away from it. But it’s just always there, and the monster people are trying to get me, like Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy.”
Baena was a writer and director who frequently collaborated with Plaza. He co-wrote David O. Russell’s 2004 film I Heart Huckabees and wrote and directed five of his own films. Plaza starred in his 2014 directorial debut, the zombie comedy Life After Beth.
After largely remaining silent since Baena’s death, Plaza is now promoting her new film, Honey Don’t! The dark comedy from director Ethan Coen has Margaret Qualley as a private investigator looking into nefarious goings-on in Bakersfield, California.
