Aubrey Plaza just went full real-talk mode about how she’s surviving after the heartbreaking death of her husband, filmmaker Jeff Baena. And spoiler alert: she described grief using an alien monster movie as her metaphor, which is both insane and also kind of genius.
So here’s the timeline: Jeff passed away in January at only 47 years old. The cause was ruled a suicide, and obviously it rocked Aubrey’s world. Fast-forward 7 months later, Aubrey popped up on Amy Poehler’s podcast *Good Hang* (yes, a *Parks and Rec* reunion, cue the Leslie Knope fangirl squeals), where Amy straight-up asked her how she’s doing.
Aubrey’s answer? Brutally honest:
“Right now, sitting with you, I feel happy. Overall, I’m functioning. I’m grateful to still be here. I think I’m okay… but it’s a daily struggle, obviously.”
But here’s where Aubrey really hit us with the plot twist: she compared grief to the 2025 movie *The Gorge* (aka the Apple TV sci-fi flick with Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy). In her words, grief is like standing between two cliffs while a gorge full of monsters lurks below. Sometimes you fall in. Sometimes you’re staring at it. Sometimes you’re running away from it. But it’s *always* there, and it’s terrifying.
“I swear when I watched it, I was like… that’s literally what my grief feels like,” Aubrey said.
And honestly? That’s the most Aubrey Plaza explanation of sadness ever. Dark, weird, cinematic, but also 100% relatable.
Aubrey and Jeff got married back in 2021, though reports say they were separated at the time of his death. Still, the love, history, and pain are clearly very real.
So yeah, Aubrey Plaza is out here turning her grief into a monster-movie metaphor, surviving one day at a time, and reminding us all that even when life gets horror-movie dark, you can still keep moving.
