With her deadpan delivery and eviscerating stare, Aubrey Plaza is currently lighting up our screens as the very sarcastic and stylish Harper in season two of Binge's comedy-drama The White Lotus. Plaza has featured in a number of films and TV shows since the start of her acting career in 2006, with her turn in cult comedy Parks and Recreation arguably her most notable role.
And while the 38-year-old is on top of the world now, this hasn't always been the case.
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In 2004, when Plaza was 20 years old and a film student at New York University, she suffered a serious stroke.
"I was going to my friend's apartment for lunch," she told NPR Fresh Air in 2017. "It's really kind of a very typical stroke story where it just happened mid-sentence out of nowhere. I don't think I had even taken my jacket off. I walked into the apartment. I was telling my two friends about a Hilary Duff concert that I had taken my younger sister to the night before."
Plaza remembers blacking out for a second.
"And then I remember there was just like a really loud kind of sound happening. And I brought my hands to my throat, and I was kind of making like an 'Ah' sound because I couldn't talk because the blood clot was in my language center of my brain," she recalled. "So I had expressive aphasia instantly, which means that if you're talking to me, I could understand what you're saying in my mind and understand how to respond. But I couldn't actually get it out. I couldn't actually talk."