Inside Aubrey Plaza’s Love Story With Late Husband Jeff Baena

Aubrey Plaza Breaks Her Silence Following Husband Jeff Baena's Death: "Unimaginable Tragedy"

Aubrey Plaza and Jeff Baena were collaborators—both in their onscreen work and in their life together off-camera.

But on Jan. 3, the actress’s filmmaker husband died by suicide at the age 47, according to the County of Los Angeles Medical Examiner.

"This is an unimaginable tragedy," Plaza and Baena’s family said in a statement obtained by E! News Jan. 6. “We are deeply grateful to everyone who has offered support. Please respect our privacy during this time.” 

Private is how the couple kept most of their relationship. While it’s unclear when exactly they met—only that it was over a game of Balderdash, per a 2022 GQ profile—they began dating in 2011.

Three years later, Baena made his directorial debut with Life After Beth, which starred Plaza (who by then was playing intern April Ludgate on the sitcom Parks and Recreation). He went on to write and direct 2016’s Joshy and 2017’s The Little Hours, which she appeared in as well.

On the TV side, they teamed up for Cinema Toast—a show Baena created and Plaza directed during the COVID-19 pandemic that was released in 2021.

"Our house became this strange post-production facility and he's downstairs on his Zooms or on his sessions and I'm upstairs editing, we're just going back and forth," The White Lotus alum told People at the time. "Yeah, it was very us. We were not baking sourdough bread, but we were sifting through hours of old movies and footage and re-cutting them together and just letting our minds go on a trip. So it was great."

“Yes, we got married,” Plaza said on a December 2021 episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, “big deal.”

But to fans, it was a big deal and they wanted to know every detail.

“We got a little bored one night,” the 40-year-old continued. “We got married, and I’ll tell you how: 1HourMarriage.com. It’s real—look it up.”

As Plaza recalled, the wedding took place on the same day she and Baena marked a decade together.

“I just said, 'Hey, it’s our 10-year anniversary. We should do something—get an ice cream cone and do something special,'" she added. “And then I joked about getting married. And he’s like, 'Well, we probably couldn’t get married that fast.' And I said, 'Well wouldn’t it be nice to get married on our actual anniversary?' And then I Googled it, and I found 1HourMarriage.com. And then I called around 5 p.m., and I said, ‘Can you come in an hour and marry me in our yard?' And he said, 'How about tomorrow?' And I said, 'Well, that’s not what you’re advertising.'"

The officiant agreed to perform the ceremony, although, Plaza said it technically took him two hours to get from Alhambra, Calif., to their L.A. home. So, the bride and groom began the last-minute preparations.

"My now-husband went and picked up food from some restaurant because we had already ordered food,” she told Ellen DeGeneres. “He almost missed the wedding ‘cause he had to wait so long for the order."

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As they embarked on their journey as newlyweds, Plaza and Baena navigated being both work and life partners.

“It’s so great. It’s so complicated,” she told Drew Barrymore about the pair’s collaboration on films and TV shows. “It’s extreme highs and extreme complications. It’s a really hard thing to navigate. But man, we’ve been together for 11 years. We just muscle our way through it.”

And the Ingrid Goes North star acknowledged married life isn’t always easy.

When asked how she related to her White Lotus character Harper in a November 2022 GQ profile, Plaza included in her answer, "I’ve been with my husband for 12 years. I relate to being in a relationship that has peaks and valleys, and going through a rough patch and comparing yourself to another couple that seems perfect."

But all the ups and downs with work and life made her think about what’s really important.

“My partner’s a filmmaker, and we’ve made movies together,” she shared on a 2020 episode of HFPA In Conversation. "We’ve had really good experiences and really bad experiences, and I think I learned going through those things that ultimately movies come and go. Movies—it’s what are our lives are built off of. But when you’re about to die, you don’t think about the movies. You think about the people in our life and your relationships. I think that’s what most people think about before they die."

However, Baena had expressed how he was grateful to have Plaza as his costar in life.

“She’s awesome,” the I Heart Huckabees writer said in an August 2022 interview with Reel Talker. “I’d be working with her if she wasn’t my wife, but luckily she’s my wife. We were together for three years before we made Life After Beth together. I think having that sort of shorthand and that sort of connection, it’s amazing.”