Aubrey Plaza Recalls Being 'Briefly' Paralyzed During Unexplained Stroke at Age 20: 'I Forgot How to Talk'

Aubrey Plaza is sharing more details about the sudden, unexplained stroke she suffered at age 20.

The Parks and Rec alum, now 40, appeared on Sirius XM The Howard Stern Show September 11, where she opened up about her health episode, recalling that she had lost the ability to speak. It was wild, she said.

“It happened mid-sentence,” Plaza told Stern Delaware Online.

Plaza, who left her native Delaware to attend New York University, said she was on the subway on her way to a friend’s apartment when an unexplained medical incident occurred.

Aubrey Plaza was a guest on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM show.

Mike Marsland/WireImage; Gilbert Carrasquillo/GC

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“I took the train into Astoria to have lunch with friends and walked into their apartment — I didn’t even take my jacket off — and it just happened,” she told Stern.

The White lotus star told Stern, “I was paralyzed, but only for a minute or so. I really lost my motor skills for a while. The scariest thing is that I forgot to speak.”

It wasn’t the first time she mentioned her stroke. In a 2017 interview with NPR’s Fresh Air, she said friends called paramedics, who at first “thought I was on drugs because they kept asking me if I was on drugs, and I wasn’t. I didn’t really put anything in my body that days except for birth control.”

Once in the hospital, Plaza says her episode was determined to be a stroke when the doctor “asked me to put my right hand on my left knee. And I couldn’t do it. I was confused about right and left. And I think they then everyone realized, oh, it’s like she had a stroke.”

Aubrey Plaza at the Cannes Film Festival on May 16, 2024. Aubrey Plaza and Nick Offerman have Parks and Rec Reunion Riding Dragons in Mountain Dew Super Bowl commercial

There are two types of stroke – ischemic and hemorrhagic – explains the Mayo Clinic. Ischemic is when blood flow to a part of the brain is blocked or reduced, while hemorrhagic, as the name implies, involves bleeding in the brain.

As Plaza told NPR, “Since then I’ve had some smaller — they call them TIAs, which are transient ischemic attacks, which are tiny strokes.”

She’s recovering from another injury these days, as the publication noted that she was late for the interview as she’s still nursing a torn ACL — an injury she suffered playing basketball during NBA All-Star weekend.

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Plaza was on Stern’s show to promote her upcoming Francis Ford Coppola film Megalopolis, admitting she was “surprised to get that audition”.

“I thought, ‘How am I on his radar?’ according to Delaware Online. “And then I didn’t think I would actually get the role. I said, ‘Well, I’ll do the meeting, sure,’ but I didn’t think I’d get the part and I was actually shocked when I got it.”

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Source: HIS Education