Aubrey Plaza is embarking on a new phase of life, as she enters the world of motherhood. Just over a year after the passing of her husband, Jeff Baena, the White Lotus star is expecting her first child with partner Christopher Abbott, as confirmed by her representative to People. E! News has reached out to Aubrey's team but has yet to receive a response.
While Aubrey, 41, and Chris, 40, have not previously publicly confirmed their romantic relationship, their working history spans several projects, including the 2020 film Black Bear and the off-Broadway revival of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea in 2023. With this new chapter in her life, Aubrey will have a fresh audience for her children's books, including The Legend of the Christmas Witch from 2021 and its sequel, The Return of the Christmas Witch in 2022. In fact, the Parks and Recreation star has previously shared the inspiration behind these books, revealing her own experience of pranking her friends' kids as the Christmas Witch.
"Basically, I have my friends sign up for slots on Christmas morning if they have kids," she explained on The Drew Barrymore Show in October. "And I show up when they're opening their presents around 7:30 in the morning."
"Then I try to steal their presents," Aubrey laughed. "So it adds this element of fright on Christmas morning—which kids love."
The news of Aubrey's pregnancy comes just over a year after her husband Jeff's death in January 2025, though the couple had been separated since September 2024 following a three-year marriage. In the year since his passing, Aubrey—who worked with Jeff on films like 2014's Life After Beth and 2017's The Little Hours—has been candid about the difficulty she's faced in dealing with her grief.
"Overall, I'm here and I'm functioning," she shared on former costar Amy Poehler's Good Hang podcast in August. "I feel really grateful to be moving through the world. I think I'm OK, but it's a daily struggle, obviously."
Aubrey likened her grief to the 2025 film The Gorge, saying, "There's like a cliff on one side and there's a cliff on the other side, then there's a gorge in between."
"I swear when I watched it—I was like, that feels like what my grief is like—or what grief could be like," Aubrey explained. "Where at all times there's like a giant ocean of awfulness that's right there and I can see it. Sometimes I just want to dive into it and be in it. Then sometimes I just look at it, and sometimes I try to get away from it. But it's always there."
