Podcast Corner: Aubrey Plaza opens up to Amy Poehler on suicide of husband

On the Good Hang podcast, the American actress opened up about the recent loss of her husband, Jeff Baena 

Good Hang, hosted by Amy Poehler (right) made headlines for last week’s guest, Aubrey Plaza (left), in her first interview since the death by suicide of her husband, Jeff Baena, in January.

We wrote about Good Hang with Amy Poehler when it started in March. Surprise surprise, Poehler, one of the funniest actors and best improvisers of the century, makes for a warm, amenable chat show host. Guests over summer have included Adam Scott, Idris Elba, and Natasha Lyonne, stars who are doing the rounds promoting their new shows or in Scott’s case, pushing his Emmy Award candidacy - Severance has 27 nominations. 

Good Hang made headlines for last week’s guest, Aubrey Plaza, in her first interview since the death by suicide of her husband, Jeff Baena, in January.

They address it right at the start of the hour-long chat. “Just to get it out of the way, people want to see you and see how you are,” Poehler says with her loving demeanor. “On behalf of all the people who feel like they know you and the people who do know you, how are you feeling today?” 

Plaza, rubbing her ‘therapy dog’, sighs: “Um, right in this very, very present moment, I feel happy to be with you. I feel, overall, I’m here, I’m functioning. I feel really grateful to be moving through the world. I’m ok. But it’s like a daily struggle obviously.”

 She says her grief is like the Myles Teller movie The Gorge, with cliffs on either side of said gorge and “a giant ocean of awfulness that’s right there and I can see it and sometimes I want to just dive right into it and be in it. And then sometimes I just look at it and then sometimes I try to get away from it but it’s always there.” 

 It can’t be easy to talk about it, but Poehler takes her hand, literally and figuratively, to steer her through a chat that goes deep into Parks and Recreation, on which they both starred, her obsession, and more, including her plea to star in a Quentin Tarantino movie.

Tarantino himself was also making headlines after his appearance on The Church of Tarantino podcast, running since April 2023. A two-hour interview was released on Friday, but it was only the following midweek when news stories started coming out (understandable as the chat is two hours long and goes through a lot of juicy topics; for example, he says he is working on a play which will open in London’s West End next year).

 Invariably the stories focused on the director addressing what is the best Tarantino movie. 

“I think Kill Bill is the movie I was born to make, I think Inglourious Basterds is my masterpiece but Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is my favourite,” he says.