Before Baby No. 1: Inside Aubrey Plaza's Relationship Timeline

Aubrey Plaza has always treated her love life like everything else in her career: head-on, a little chaotic, and surprisingly candid. She has been open about dating, collaborating with partners, going through a brutal loss, and then finding her way back to something hopeful. Here is how it all fits together.

From putting herself out there to starting over

Back in 2021, Plaza told Bumble viewers she was firmly in the go-meet-people camp — basically, say hi, follow the laugh, see what happens. That fearless approach tracks with the rest of her timeline: long stretches with creative partners, a pandemic wedding, and yes, a few very on-brand curveballs like a DIY backyard altar and a near-Vegas elopement that never happened.

Then came the hardest chapter. Filmmaker Jeff Baena, whom Plaza married in 2020 after nearly a decade together, died by suicide in January 2025 at 47. A medical examiner later noted the two had separated in September 2024, a split they had not made public. Plaza’s team called it an unimaginable tragedy, thanked people for the support, and asked for privacy. In August 2025, she said on the Good Hang podcast that she was functioning and grateful, but every day was a fight.

She reached for a movie to describe what grief actually felt like. Of course she did.

'The Gorge has a cliff on one side and a cliff on the other, and this churning mess in between. That is exactly how my grief feels — this ocean of awfulness I can see right next to me. Sometimes I want to jump into it. Sometimes I just stare at it. Sometimes I try to run.'

Less than a year later, Plaza was seen with actor Chris Abbott — a familiar face from her past work — and by April 2026, they were expecting their first child. A happy update, finally.

Relationship timeline (with the oddities that make it very Aubrey)

• Michael Cera (2010–2011ish): Plaza and Cera connected making 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and dated for about a year and a half. They stayed friends, and she has described him, fondly, as delightfully odd in a way that matched her own wavelength. Years later, Cera told Rolling Stone they nearly swerved off the highway in Vegas to get married on a whim — the plan would have been to divorce right after, purely so they could call each other exes at 20. They did not, obviously. Cera later married Nadine in 2018; they welcomed a son in 2022.
• Jeff Baena (2011–2025): Plaza started dating the writer-director in 2011. They became frequent collaborators, making Life After Beth, Joshy, The Little Hours, and Spin Me Round together. Baena once told Newsweek in 2022 that he kept discovering new gears in her — performer, producer, writer — and that she wore every hat with ease. They married during the 2020 lockdown in peak pandemic fashion: a quick online license and a makeshift altar in their yard because, well, what else do you do when you are stuck at home. In January 2025, months after a private separation in September 2024, Baena died by suicide at 47. Plaza’s camp called it a devastating loss and asked for space as she grieved.
• Chris Abbott (2025–present): Plaza and Abbott already had history on screen (the 2020 film Black Bear) and on stage (a 2023 off-Broadway run of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea). They were first spotted together in July 2025 and started dating later that year. In April 2026, news broke that they are expecting their first baby. It is a fast-moving chapter, but given they have already played opposite each other twice, the chemistry did not exactly come out of nowhere.

Where she is now

Plaza has not sugarcoated anything: the career grind, the messy parts of love, or the way grief hangs around. But she is also building something new with Abbott, with a baby on the way. For someone who once told people to say hi if something makes you laugh, it feels like she is following her own advice — just with a lot more life behind it.