Aubrey Plaza deletes Instagram after her husband’s tragic death

Aubrey Plaza suffered an immense tragedy in the opening days of 2025. Her husband, film director Jeff Baena, died by suicide on Jan 3 and left the actress and her family devastated. Plaza naturally did not attend the Golden Globes on Jan 5, where she had been scheduled to present an award, and released a short statement along with Baena’s family the day after. “This is an unimaginable tragedy,” it read. “We are deeply grateful to everyone who has offered support. Please respect our privacy during this time.”

Plaza has now taken another step to protect her privacy and well-being by deleting her Instagram account. On it, she used to post standard updates about her life and career, as well as support and love for her husband. But those posts are now gone, and those who followed her on Instagram have indicated that it was because of a rush of trolling after the tragic death.

The Reddit celebrity news forum, r/FauxMoi, sheds a little light on the situation in the comments of the post about the deletion. “Considering the horrendous stuff I’ve seen glimpses of that people have commented, I would have too. She deserves all the peace she can get right now as she grieves,” commented one person.

Another said that the main problem was “her having to see every incel chad express his sincere happiness that she’s ‘back on the market.'” With the Instagram gone, the existence of those troll comments cannot be verified, but it’s truly disgusting if true.

Plaza has always been unsure about social media. In a now-deleted 2017 interview with The AV Club, she said ,”I don’t have an Instagram obsession like a person that I’m obsessing about, but I do relate to the idea of getting kind of wrapped up in looking at other people’s stuff and feeling bad about yourself.”(via Well and Good)

She went on, “I have a very complicated relationship with the social media. I don’t really like to do it, but sometimes, you know, it’s kind of fun, and it’s a way to connect with people. But sometimes it makes me hate myself. I don’t really know how to handle it.” She mentioned it was right around the time of the first Donald Trump election that she quit Twitter, now X. In the wake of Trump’s second election, platforms such as Instagram are rolling back DEI initiatives and allowing more hate speech, so that’s another reason for leaving the whole sorry show behind. Plaza is of course perfectly within her rights to delete Instagram, and indeed to never return to social media again. She should do whatever she needs to do to find healing.