Jeff Baena, director and husband of Aubrey Plaza, dies at 47
Aubrey Plaza’s husband, director Jeff Baena, has died. He was 47.
The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner confirmed his death and listed his residence at the location of his death. No cause of death has been shared at this time.
TODAY.com reached out the Plaza and Baena’s reps for comment.
Baena, a director and screenwriter, is a graduate of New York University’s film school. After graduating, he moved to Los Angeles and started his career as a production assistant for Robert Zemeckis before he went on to work as an assistant editor for David O. Russell.
He is best known for co-writing the 2004 movie “I Heart Huckabees” with Russell, which starred Dustin Hoffman, Mark Wahlberg, Lily Tomlin and Jude Law. He also created the 2021 Showtime anthology series “Cinema Toast” and directed 2020’s “Horse Girl” featuring Alison Brie.
Baena and Plaza were frequent collaborators over the years. He wrote and directed 2014’s “Life After Beth” and 2017’s “The Little Hours,” both of which starred Plaza. They collaborated most recently on 2022’s “Spin Me Round,” a romcom co-written and directed by Baena that featured Plaza.
Over the years, Baena and Plaza kept their relationship private.
After more than a decade together, the couple got married in 2021.
The “Parks and Recreation” star called Baena her “darling husband” in a May 2021 Instagram post, seemingly confirming their nuptials at the time. Plaza later confirmed during a December 2021 episode of “The Drew Barrymore Show” that she and Baena got married during the pandemic.
Host Drew Barrymore asked Plaza what it was like to work with her husband, with the actor sharing that it was “so great.”
“It’s so complicated. It’s extreme highs and extreme complications,” she explained. “It’s a really hard thing to navigate, but man, we’ve been together for 11 years…We just muscle our way through it. The marriage thing was just a joke that just honestly went too far.”
Plaza said that she and Baena decided to get “married on a whim” and said that they wed less than four hours after they made the decision.
“Jeff got really into tie-dying during the quarantine, so I decided that Jeff and I were going to wear tie-dye pajamas that he had made for us,” she explained. “I made a love altar in the backyard of all of our love objects. It was very witchcore, but it happened.‘“
Baena is survived by Plaza, his parents and stepparents, as well as his siblings.
