Tragic Details About Aubrey Plaza

Aubrey Plaza has been dazzling audiences since 2006, from the time she guest-starred on "30 Rock" to working with Francis Ford Coppola in the epic sci-fi movie, "Megalopolis." She rose to fame on the comedy "Parks and Recreation" and found a new fanbase when she starred on the superhero shows "Legion" and "Agatha All Along." The downside of that success, however, was how people thought she actually was her apathetic, deadpan character from the NBC comedy, which is a big misconception fans have about her.

Over the years, Plaza has experienced several major tragedies in her personal and professional life, including abruptly losing a loved one, suffering a major medical emergency at a young age, and not getting a movie role she desperately wanted. She's made audiences laugh for decades with her peculiar sense of humor — having jump-started her career with improv comedy — but she's silently endured unbelievable hardship and handled tough situations with grace.

Aubrey Plaza began dating filmmaker Jeff Baena in 2011 and the lovebirds married a decade later. Over the years, they worked together on several different projects, including the 2014 movie "Life After Beth," which starred Plaza and was written and directed by Baena. The same went for the films "Joshy," "The Little Hours," and "Spin Me Round."

Unfortunately, Baena was found dead at home in Los Angeles in January 2025, and it was later confirmed he died by suicide. Though the couple was known for being intensely private, there were special moments in which both praised the other. In May 2021, Plaza gushed about Baena on Instagram about the movie he co-wrote with Alison Brie, saying she was "so proud of [her] darling husband" and was looking forward to working in Italy together on the rom-com "Spin Me Round."

In an interview with Reel Talker from 2022, Baena talked about how great it was to get to work with his wife. "The opportunities to create together, to do something creative where we're both fulfilled, it's like, how rare is that? She's down and she's so talented, so I'm really lucky" he said.

Though they were only married for a few years, Aubrey Plaza and Jeff Baena's nuptials didn't sit well with some superfans of the "Parks and Recreation" star. In an interview with Cosmopolitan in 2022, about a year after she'd married Baena, Plaza revealed something truly shocking: Baena had received actual death threats.

The outlet asked about her marriage and how bisexuals were allegedly upset she was off the market, and that's when Plaza dropped that bombshell. "People project so much stuff onto marriage, but it wasn't some big statement I'm trying to make where I want everybody to react to it," she said. Some fans are, perhaps, a tad too passionate about Plaza, based on the thirst tweets she had to read out loud about herself in a video with BuzzFeed.

Moreover, many of the responses to Baena's passing were insensitive comments about Plaza being single again. Hopefully, Plaza never has to read them, which would undoubtedly add to the pain caused from the loss of her husband.

Strokes aren't typically associated with young people, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does note that they can happen at any age. One of the untold truths about Aubrey Plaza is that she had a stroke before she could even legally drink. In the early 2000s, Plaza was a New York University film student who suddenly had her life turned upside down when her health took a nosedive.

"I was talking, and I looked down at my arm — it was like my arm wasn't attached to my body. I couldn't feel anything on my right side. I blacked out or something for a minute, and then when I was conscious again, I couldn't speak," she told The Guardian. This resulted in Plaza experiencing expressive aphasia for a couple of days, which meant she didn't remember how to talk. (This is a similar condition that both Bruce Willis and Wendy Williams have.) Thankfully, Plaza was able to recover, but the ordeal left a lasting impression on her.

Though she had that stroke years ago, Aubrey Plaza still feels the repercussions of it. Speaking with NPR, the actress explained that she had help from a cognitive therapy specialist and that her brain healed quickly. However, her body still has the physical scars from the terrifying experience. "The blood clot area in my brain will never be healed. It's a tiny, little black hole in my brain," she revealed.

Plaza added that she still experiences things from the stroke that maybe others wouldn't notice, but she certainly does. "Since then, I've had some minor, they call them TIAs, which are transient ischemic attacks, that are tiny little strokes. So something's up with my blood, but I don't know what it is." Obviously, these TIAs haven't caused her to stop working or living her life, but it's still scary to imagine dealing with that kind of bodily trauma for decades and not even know what's causing it.

Over her career so far, Aubrey Plaza has played some truly iconic characters, such as April Ludgate from "Parks and Recreation" and Ingrid Thorburn in "Ingrid Goes West." However, there's one role she wished she could've added to her impressive resume.

In an interview with Cosmopolitan, which was shared on X, formerly Twitter, Plaza lamented about not getting cast in "Deadpool 2," explaining how she was in the middle of working when she auditioned for the superhero sequel and wasn't in the best mindset at the time. "That one hurt," she said, adding, "Me and Ryan Reynolds, what could go wrong? We'd be so great together."

Plaza admitted she tanked the audition, which clearly still bothers her, despite all her other achievements. The video was posted to X in 2023 and "Deadpool 2" premiered in 2018, so the Marvel movie sounds like one of Plaza's biggest career regrets. Of course, she did still end up joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Rio Vidal in "Agatha All Along" in 2024.