Aubrey Plaza posed with her partner, the actor Chris Abbott (who played Charlie, Marnie’s boyfriend, on the TV series Girls), at the Tony Awards wearing a dress from Chanel’s Coco Beach 2026 collection that showcased her pregnancy. People magazine broke the news that they were expecting a baby last April. That the actress (who rose to fame on the series Parks and Recreation and was one of the leads in the second season of The White Lotus) is pregnant has angered those who believe that she has moved on too quickly, since 15 months have passed since her husband, the screenwriter and filmmaker Jeff Baena, was found dead in his home. This is not the first time the actress has been singled out. After Baena’s death was ruled a suicide, reports emerged that the couple had been separated since September 2024. Some blamed her as if, in some way, she were responsible for his death.
Those who think she hasn’t taken enough time to grieve find their views reinforced by outlets such as Page Six and The New York Post. “Actress Aubrey Plaza pregnant with her first baby one year after her husband’s death,” both outlets headlined the pregnancy, emphasising how much time had passed since the tragic date.
If a widower had rebuilt his life that ‘quickly,’ would the reaction have been the same? Let us not forget that one of the most iconic romantic comedies in film history is Sleepless in Seattle (1993), in which Tom Hanks plays a widower whom people urge to find love again. Yet many viewers thought Carrie Bradshaw moved too quickly in And Just Like That when, after her husband’s death in the first episode of season one, she began dating again by the middle of season two. The editor of the book in which Bradshaw addresses grief told her she needed to start dating to “give readers a little hope.”
Mónica Lidón, an author who has written on the subject, says that culturally society still judges grief and new relationships differently depending on who experiences them. “It is often understood or accepted sooner when a man rebuilds his life after a loss, while when a woman does so there are more judgments, more questions and even external feelings of guilt. However, each grieving process is unique and should not be conditioned by social expectations or by the gender of the person going through it,” this grief expert said.
José González, author of La tristeza cura (or Sadness Heals), agrees: “When a woman starts a new relationship, judgments about loyalty, emotional fidelity or even guilt appear more frequently. We still carry certain cultural stereotypes. We expect women to take on the role of guardians of family memory and emotional bonds. When they rebuild their romantic lives, some people mistakenly interpret that they are abandoning that role.”
He believes one of the greatest mistakes society makes is trying to measure grief by a calendar. “Dates reassure us because they are objective, but grief is an emotional and relational phenomenon, not a chronological one. Some people need years to reorganize their lives after a loss, and others begin a new relationship relatively soon. None of those situations, by themselves, tell us how much they loved the deceased. Love is not measured by how long we remain alone,” he says.
He is concerned about the debate sparked by Aubrey Plaza’s pregnancy. “The truly relevant question is not how much time has passed, but how the person is experiencing the loss, what meaning the new relationship has for them and whether both experiences can coexist in a healthy way. The calendar tells us how much time has passed; it does not tell us how much emotional ground has been covered. In grief, emotional time does not align with social time,” he stresses.
Seven months after Jeff Baena’s suicide, Plaza appeared on Good Hang, the podcast hosted by her friend Amy Poehler. The comedian asked how she had been coping. “At all times, there’s, like, a giant ocean of just awfulness that’s just right there and I can see it,” she said. “Sometimes I just want to dive into it and be in it. And sometimes I look at it and sometimes I just try to get away from it, but it’s always there.”
Raquel Mascaraque, another researcher who has written ¿Me quieres o qué quieres? (or Do You Love Me or What Do You Want?) notes that no one knows what kind of grieving process the actress has experienced. “Perhaps she experienced it within the relationship. This is called anticipatory grief because it occurs before the loss actually happens. There is a moment when you realize the relationship has no future and you begin to process the loss while the person is still present. Often it is an unconscious process to protect ourselves, and you can experience sadness, guilt, anger, fear of uncertainty, even loneliness because no one around you knows what you’re living through, but at the same time it prepares you for the loss. That does not mean grief disappears completely once the loss is official, or, of course, that a new grief can’t emerge when, in this case, an ex-partner takes their own life even if you are no longer in a relationship,” she says.
Lidón notes something she frequently sees in her practice. “In addition to managing the pain of the loss and everything involved in rebuilding a life that has been completely devastated, they have to face judgment from others. There is a huge need to feel understood, but they often receive criticism about how they should be grieving. Many people end up questioning their own emotions and feeling forced to constantly justify themselves. And that is very frustrating, because it never seems to be enough,” she says. “If you move on, you are judged for doing so too quickly; if you don’t move on, you are judged for continuing to suffer. When a person is so vulnerable, these kinds of comments do not help healing; they add another burden to the process and increase the suffering. That is why it is so important to understand that there are no universal deadlines for grief. Each person has their own timing, their own resources and their own way of adapting to such a significant loss.”
And with that in mind, Mascaraque says that what matters is not that time passes, but what is done with it. “What we seek is evolution, growth and the development of new tools that help us manage and regulate our emotions, and that requires work. Perhaps it is not so much about thinking whether you are ready for a new relationship, but about asking whether you lose sight of your relationship with yourself when you share space and time with another person,” she says.
As Noelia Ramírez says, “on television it is not easy to free women from grief.” Apparently, off-screen life is no different.
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