Christopher Abbott had a quick answer when Jenna Bush Hager began congratulating him on the baby during a May 18 appearance on Today. “That’s very nice, thank you very much. It’s very exciting,” Abbott said, as he spoke publicly for the first time about the life update he shares with Aubrey Plaza.
The moment offered a rare on-air acknowledgment of a pregnancy that Plaza revealed in April, and it confirmed what the pair had already made public last month through her representative: they are expecting their first baby together. The news lands after years of shared work, including 2020’s Black Bear and the 2023 off-Broadway revival of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, long before their relationship became public.
Plaza, 41, had hinted at her feelings about motherhood weeks earlier on the April 20 episode of the SmartLess podcast, saying she has “always wanted to see what that’s all about,” and that the whole thing seemed interesting. Abbott, 40, did not add details on Today, though he briefly joked, “I thought—for my Tony nom,” before cutting himself off and adding, “I’m kidding, I know. There’s too much going on.”
That subdued exchange is notable because the two have been linked on-screen and onstage for years. Their relationship in film dates back to 2019, when Plaza played Allison and Abbott played Gabe in the second part of Black Bear, a project Plaza also produced. She later called the film a “labor of love” in a 2021 Los Angeles Times interview, a description that now reads like a marker of how closely their professional and personal lives have overlapped.
The pregnancy also arrives after a difficult year for Plaza personally. The article presents Jeff Baena, her husband, as having died in 2025, a loss that adds gravity to the news that she and Abbott are preparing to welcome a child. For now, Abbott’s brief comment is the clearest public sign of how they are responding: with gratitude, and with the sort of quiet excitement that leaves little doubt about where the story is headed next.
