Everything Aubrey Plaza Has Said About Her Health Scare

Aubrey Plaza's role as the deadpan, sarcastic April Ludgate in the NBC sitcom "Parks and Recreation" helped launch her into fame. Since "Parks and Recreation," Plaza has been busy. She starred in Season 2 of "The White Lotus," which earned her an Emmy nomination, and she was one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in 2023. But despite the glamorous red carpet appearances at awards shows and events like the Met Gala, Plaza's life has had some tragic moments in it, including her stroke at the age of 20. It happened at a friend's house in 2004,  and Plaza even told NPR in 2017 that the paramedics didn't think she was having a stroke at first, considering her age. "They were thinking that I was dehydrated," Plaza told NPR in 2017. "And I really think they thought I was on drugs because they kept asking me if I'd taken drugs, and I hadn't." 

We were curious to find out more about how common it is for young people to get strokes like Plaza did, so The List exclusively spoke with Dr. Jason Singh, Chief Medical Officer of One Oak Medical Group, for his thoughts. "Strokes in younger adults are indeed uncommon but not as rare as many people assume," Singh explained.

When Aubrey Plaza went on "The Howard Stern Show" in 2024, she talked about this unexpected event. She knew something was wrong immediately: "in mid sentence, it just happened. And that's when I was paralyzed, but really only for like a minute ... like I lost my motor skills really briefly. But then the freakiest thing was that I forgot how to talk."

When Plaza started showing symptoms of a stroke, her friends thought that she was joking at first, but they ended up calling an ambulance as they realized she was in the midst of a medical emergency. If you're looking to help identify if a stroke is happening, there are certain symptoms and signals you should be aware of. Dr. Jason Singh suggested using the mnemonic FAST-ED: "Face drooping, arm weakness, speech difficulties [like Plaza had], time (when did it start / how long it lasted), eyes (visual changes), dizziness." These would apply to anyone of any age. For someone younger, like Plaza, there might be other symptoms as well. He said to be aware of "isolated severe headache, vertigo, or cognitive changes without obvious motor deficits."

Plaza's stroke was impacting the part of the brain that processes language, so along with being unable to talk, she couldn't write anything; this is a condition called expressive aphasia. She explained she was scared that she might never get her voice back, or that it would recur.

As for what doctors believe was the cause of the stroke; she said that some thought it may have been her birth control. Taking birth control every day, if it's high in estrogen, does have a small chance of causing a stroke. And when she was on David Letterman in 2011, she also said that some thought it could have been related to the migraines she got as a kid.

This does line up with what Dr. Jason Singh told us. Birth control pills can be a risk factor "particularly combined with smoking." He also noted that other risk factors for strokes in young people include "recreational drug use (especially cocaine and methamphetamines), autoimmune disorders, and genetic conditions like patent foramen ovale or arterial dissections." And then there's also an elevated concern if someone has "hypertension and diabetes ... often linked to lifestyle changes including increased sedentary behavior, processed food consumption, and chronic stress," said Singh.

Plaza credits her youth for her brain's ability to heal quickly. "I was talking after a couple of days," she told NPR. "But I still have — there's still certain, you know, things that only I would notice that are kind of residual from — left over from that incident," she added. Those include having some transient ischemic attacks (TIAs), which she said were like "tiny little strokes."