Baena was found dead at his Los Angeles residence on Friday morning by his assistant who made the distressing 911 call and his family have now confirmed his cause of death to be suicide.
Now, the Hollywood filmmaker’s comments about co-writing Horse Girl with the film’s star, Alison Brie, have resurfaced.
Ahead of the film’s 2020 release, Baena told Reddit users what inspired the project.
“Alison and I both have had family members who have had mental illness, and it was a major influence on working on this,” he wrote in response to a fan question.
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Baena — who also directed Horse Girl — explained that his first stepmother had “manic depression and was in and out of facilities in Miami due to the baker act (5150 in California).”
A fan then asked the pair whether the film was made to be a “statement” about how the current systems are “failing” those with mental health struggles.
“While I would not consider Horse Girl to be an activist film, the themes of how we as a society and individuals treat persons with mental illness was a major focus and impetus for making this,” Baena responded.
Baena also spoke about how individuals who “still need treatment” are “released all the time” from mental health facilities.
“The 72 hour mandatory hold only applies to patients who are a danger to themselves, so they must be released after that appraisal period,” he explained to the Reddit fans.
Brie then noted that she “tapped into very real emotions” while working on the film due to her experience with her grandmother having “paranoid schizophrenia.”
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Baena — who also worked on Spin Me Round with Plaza and Brie — was found dead at his Los Angeles home on Friday. He was 47.
An assistant found Baena at home, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The Los Angeles Police Department told Page Six that they “responded to a death Investigation” and that “the case is being handled by the Coroner’s Office.”
The family is devastated by the tragic news and requests privacy during this difficult time.
Plaza gave rare insight into her marriage with Baena during a Howard Stern interview three months ago.
When the talk show host suggested that being married to a filmmaker rather than an actor was “better for [her],” the Parks and Recreation alum agreed.
Stern then insinuated that her job was “not bringing you the happiness that you thought it would bring,” Plaza said with a laugh: “It’s lonely at the top.”
On The Drew Barrymore Show, she also spoke about their spontaneous wedding during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s so great, it’s so complicated,” she told Barrymore. “It’s, like, extreme highs and extreme, you know, complications. It’s a really hard thing to navigate, but we’ve been together for 11 years. We just muscle our way through it.”
She also gave more insight into their backyard wedding outfits, the tie-dye pajamas Baena made for them during the pandemic.
That same year, Plaza also told People that the Covid-19 pandemic strengthened their relationship.
“We were quarantined for months and months like everybody else,” she revealed. “And we did enjoy it. I think it was, obviously other than all of the catastrophic things happening in the world, just on a personal level, relationship level, was kind of nice to just be forced to be in one place for that long.”
In her final post shared with him in May 2021, Plaza referred to Baena as her “darling husband” and expressed how “proud” she was of him.
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