Scott Derrickson, who directed the 2025 film “The Gorge,” said Audrey Plaza’s admission that the film helped her process grief following the unexpected death of her husband Jeff Baena was “very touching.”
While speaking to Entertainment Weekly in an interview published Saturday, Derrickson explained, “I mean, how could I not be moved by that? It was very touching. I think she was being really earnest and, of course, it makes you as a filmmaker feel good that your work is out there giving people experiences and helping them define their own feelings.”
The director also said that this is the role of movies in general. “I don’t think it was something unique to ‘The Gorge,’” he added. “I think that she just happened to talk about it the way I’ve talked about movies giving clarity to my own experiences and my own feelings many times.”
Baena died by suicide in January. In an interview on Amy Poehler’s “Good Hang” podcast earlier this week, Plaza said the movie had become a great source of comfort for her and explained that working through grief reminded her of the film’s plot. “This is like a really dumb analogy, and it was kind of a joke at a certain point, but I actually mean it — did you see that movie, ‘The Gorge?’” she asked Poehler. “It’s like an alien movie with Miles Teller, but in the movie, there’s a cliff on one side and then there’s a cliff on the other side and then there’s a gorge in between and it’s filled with all these monster people that are trying to get them.”
“I swear, when I watched it, I was like, that feels like what my grief is like — or what grief could be like — at all times there’s a giant ocean of awfulness that’s right there and I can see it,” Plaza continued.
“Sometimes I just want to dive into it and be in it and sometimes I just look at it and sometimes I try to get away from it, but it’s always there. It’s just always there and the monster people are trying to get me, like Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy.”
Plaza and Baena had been together since 2011 and shared news of their marriage in 2021. The pair separated in September 2024.
