A beautiful surprise

Aubrey Plaza is pregnant. The 41-year-old actress is expecting her first child with partner and fellow actor Christopher Abbott, with a due date set for fall 2026, according to People — a report her representative has since confirmed.

“It was a beautiful surprise after an emotional year,” a source close to the couple shared. “They feel very blessed.” The news arrives at a tender moment in Plaza’s life — one defined equally by profound grief and, now, unexpected renewal.

It appears Plaza had already been quietly keeping the secret for some time. She was seen seated front row at Paris Fashion Week last month, carefully concealing a growing baby bump.

From co-stars to partners

Plaza and Abbott, 40, have a creative history that stretches back several years. They first shared the screen in the 2020 psychological thriller Black Bear, a film that earned both of them considerable praise. In 2023, they reunited on stage for the off-Broadway revival of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea — which also marked Plaza’s stage debut — playing volatile, passionate lovers opposite each other for nearly three months.

It was during that production that the depth of their connection became apparent. “He cares but he also doesn’t care — it’s the best recipe for me for a scene partner,” Plaza told the New York Times at the time. “It’s fun and it’s also good and it’s also safe. I like to just throw things out the window and laugh and mess around and not take it so seriously. It’s a hard combo to come by.” Abbott, for his part, said the two shared a willingness to “be ugly and weird and strange” together — a rare thing to find in any creative partnership, let alone a romantic one.

When exactly their working relationship blossomed into something more romantic remains unclear. The two were spotted together at the Khaite Fall/Winter 2026 fashion show during New York Fashion Week in February, their first notable public appearance as a couple.

The year that changed everything

The pregnancy news comes after one of the hardest years of Plaza’s life. Her late husband, screenwriter and director Jeff Baena — whom she had been with since 2011 and married in 2021 — died by suicide in January 2025. He was 47. The couple had quietly separated four months earlier, in September 2024, though news of that separation only emerged publicly after his death.

Plaza had largely stayed private in the immediate aftermath, but opened up last August on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast in a conversation that struck a chord with many listeners. “Overall, I’m here and I’m functioning,” she said of her state of mind. “I feel really grateful to be moving through the world. I think I’m OK — but it’s a daily struggle.”

She compared her grief to The Gorge, a 2025 film she said captured something true about loss — the feeling of an abyss you can’t escape, that you sometimes run from and sometimes just sit with. Raw, honest words from someone who has always resisted easy sentiment.

Looking ahead

The timing of this news feels both poignant and quietly fitting. Plaza has spent years building a reputation for defying expectations — from her deadpan breakout as April Ludgate on Parks and Recreation, to serious dramatic work in The White Lotus, to her ventures into children’s books with The Legend of the Christmas Witch in 2021 and its 2022 follow-up. Motherhood appears to be the next unexpected chapter in a life that has never moved in a straight line.

Abbott, meanwhile, is currently starring on Broadway in Death of a Salesman and has Netflix’s East of Eden on the horizon later this year.

After everything, it seems like a beautiful surprise was exactly what was needed.