Love is a many-splendored thing, especially when you’re gawking at it from the outside. In this column, we examine the celebrity couples who give us hope for our own romantic futures as we try to learn what we can from their well-documented bonds.
“Did you hear that April from Parks and Rec and Charlie from Girls are having a baby?” is a real text message that I opened my eyes to yesterday after a midday nap. And indeed, it seems that Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott are expecting their first child together this fall.
“It was a beautiful surprise after an emotional year,” a source told People on Tuesday. “They feel very blessed.” I’ve been obsessed with Plaza’s relationship status ever since I learned that she and Michael Cera almost got married just so they could refer to each other as “ex-husband” and “ex-wife,” so this is obviously a huge day for me!
Plaza and Abbott have a lot of professional history together, having co-starred in the off-Broadway revival of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea in 2023 and 2024, as well as in the 2019 indie Black Bear. Still, for fans of both actors, this week’s news doubled as a relationship reveal—and I hardly have the words to convey how chic I think that is. Relatedly, I feel like we’re not going to hear a thing about their kid until their first dark yet surprisingly uplifting mumblecore movie opens at Sundance in 2048.
Obviously, the internet being the ever-darkening cesspool that it is, I’ve seen some truly weird online chatter about Plaza’s announcement coming a year after the tragic death of her estranged husband, screenwriter and director Jeff Baena. On this point, I simply cannot be clear enough: get a life, haters! When and how a famous person you will never meet in real life decides to start a family is none of your business—and frankly, being ungenerous about Plaza and Abbott’s good news feels like the height of parasocial unpleasantness.
Anyone who’s experienced grief firsthand can tell you there’s no perfect timeline for “getting over it”; pretty much the best you can hope for when you’ve had to say goodbye to someone close to you is to be able to hold space for joy, even as you mourn—and that seems to be exactly what Plaza is doing. Mazel tovs all around!
