Actress Aubrey Plaza is pregnant with her first child, just over a year after the death of her husband, Jeff Baena.
The White Lotus star, 41, is expecting her first child with her partner Christopher Abbott, 40, and is due in the fall, a source told People.
“It was a beautiful surprise after an emotional year,” the source told the publication, adding that “they feel very blessed.”
A rep for Plaza later confirmed the news to People.
Last January, Plaza’s late husband, Baena, 47, a screenwriter and film director, died by suicide in their Los Angeles-area home.
The pair met in 2011 and secretly married in 2021. The couple had worked together on projects including Life After Beth, Joshy, The Little Hours, and Spin Me Round.
They quietly separated four months before his death, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner Investigator.
Plaza and Abbott worked together on an Off-Broadway revival of John Patrick Shanley’s Danny and the Deep Blue Sea in 2023, which marked the actress’s stage debut. They also co-starred in the 2020 film Black Bear.
At the time of her late husband’s death, Plaza’s rep said his passing was an “unimaginable tragedy” and asked for privacy.
The actress opened up about her grief during an appearance on Amy Poehler’s podcast, Good Hang, last August, where she described her grief as a “daily struggle.”
“Right in this very, very present moment, I feel happy to be with you,” Plaza said, when asked how she was navigating a “terrible, terrible, tragic year.”
“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.”
Plaza said that “at all times, there’s like a giant ocean of awfulness that’s like right there and I can see it, and sometimes I just want to like dive into it and be in it.”
“And then sometimes I just look at it, and then sometimes I’m like trying to get away from it, but it’s always there,” the actress continued. “It’s like always there, and the monster people are trying to get me, like Miles Teller.”
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