Inside Pregnant Aubrey Plaza's Private Romance With Christopher Abbott

Christopher Abbott Breaks Silence on Having Baby With Pregnant Aubrey Plaza

Aubrey Plaza found love with a familiar face.

And that love was on display when she and Christopher Abbott officially made their red carpet debut as a couple June 7 at the 2026 Tony Awards, where he was nominated for his featured role in the play Broadway play Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (The award went to Becky Shaw's Alden Ehrenreich).

Plaza—who is expecting a baby with Abbott—cradled her bump as the two posed for pictures at New York's Radio City Music Hall, showing subtle PDA as they held hands and wrapped their arms around each other.

And while the White Lotus star is known for keeping people guessing about her feelings onscreen, she and the Girls alum have publicly addressed their relationship—well, sort of. After Jenna Bush Hager congratulated Abbott on a May episode of Today, he teased he thought her well-wishes were for his Tony nomination before acknowledging “there's too much going on” and thanking her for the kind message.

"That's very nice," he replied. "Thank you very much. It's very exciting."

Abbott and Plaza's relationship was made public when her rep confirmed to People April 7 that the couple are expecting a baby together.

“I’ve always wanted to see what that’s all about, you know?” the Parks and Recreation alum said about motherhood on the SmartLess podcast later that month. "It just seems so interesting that whole thing."

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions

Plaza and Abbott have known each other since at least 2019, when they made the indie film Black Bear, playing a married couple in the second half of the dual-character, WTF-is-happening psychological thriller.

Plaza called the movie "a real artistic labor of love" when it came out in 2021, telling the Los Angeles Times, “Without sharing too much from my personal life, I knew if I decided to do this movie, it was going to be really painful. I have worked over the years with a process of using the things that have happened in my real life, the struggles I’m going through...using it as a cathartic process."

Owen Hoffmann/Getty Images Courtesy of Rand Luxury

At the time, she had been with filmmaker Jeff Baena for a decade and had starred in four of his movies. (Working with him, she acknowledged to People in 2019, could be "challenging," and they strove for balance.) As it turned out, they were also married, a life update Plaza didn't disclose until May 2021, when she referred to him as her husband for the first time on Instagram.

"We celebrated our 10-year anniversary while we were in the lockdown,” Plaza told Vanity Fair of their “very impulsive” 2020 backyard nuptials, which included an officiant from 1hourmarriage.com.

Plaza has always been private about her personal life, but when it comes to the confusion over where her characters end and she begins, she has credited her "defense mechanisms" coming into play for her oft-sardonic persona.

“Celebrity and fame and all that stuff is scary to me," she told Harper's Bazaar in 2021. "My reaction is to find the funny in it, even if I come out looking weird."

Consider when she told Howard Stern in September 2024, "I'm really good at manipulating my feelings, that's what I get paid to do." Asked if that was a peril of dating actors, not knowing how they really felt, she deadpanned, "Yeah, I would stay away."

Asked if she was married to a fellow actor, Plaza said, "No, I'm married to a writer-director." Asked if that was probably better for her, she replied, "Mmmhmm."

As it turned out, she and Baena had separated around this time. He died by suicide less than four months later, on Jan. 3, 2025, the medical examiner's report noting that Plaza had moved from Los Angeles to New York the previous September.

While Plaza inched back into the public eye for work, she mourned privately, telling Amy Poehler on an August episode of Good Hang, "I think I'm OK, but you know, it's like a daily struggle, obviously."

Plaza compared her grief to the horror movie The Gorge, in that "at all times there's like a giant ocean of, just, awfulness that's right there and I can see it And sometimes I just want to dive into it, and just like be in it. And then sometimes I just look at it."

Sometimes she tried to get away from it, she added, "but it's always there."

Marc Piasecki/WireImage

But in the meantime, she was working on moving forward.

Making her theater debut, Plaza had reunited with Abbott in 2023 when they costarred in an off-Broadway revival of the John Patrick Shanley play Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, playing two broken souls who connect in a bar and spend the night together.

“We’re both unafraid to be ugly and weird and strange," Abbott told the New York Times during rehearsals that September. And, after he read the script, he immediately thought of Plaza and her "nervous bright eyes" to play opposite him.

“We’re doing this play every night for an audience, but I think you also have to do it for each other,” he noted. "We want to entertain the audience, but I personally want to entertain Aubrey.”

Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

And now they're starring in a real-life romance, playing themselves.

As for the major milestone ahead, Plaza told Neon in 2014 about having children, "I really weirdly want them right now, but it’s not great timing. But I also feel, like, when is it ever good timing?"

To look back on her and Abbott's road to parenthood, keep reading.

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