Aubrey Plaza was temporarily paralyzed and unable to speak during an unexplained stroke at the age of 20
Aubrey Plaza recalled the “wild” moment when, at age 20, a sudden stroke left her briefly paralyzed and unable to speak.
“The craziest thing about it – and kind of the coolest thing about it – it happened in the middle of a sentence,” the actress, now 40, said Wednesday on SiriusXM’s “Howard Stern Show,” according to Delaware Online.
Plaza said she was taking a train to Astoria, Queens, in New York City to have lunch with friends when she suffered the unexplained stroke.
“I walked into her apartment – I hadn’t even taken off my jacket – and it just happened,” she said.
The “Agatha All Along” actress explained that she was completely paralyzed, but only for about a minute.
“I lost my motor skills for a short time. The worst thing was that I forgot how to speak,” she explained.
The “White Lotus” star, known for her sarcastic sense of humor, recalled that her friends thought she was playing a prank on them during NPR’s “Fresh Air” segment in 2017.
“But after a few minutes they kept saying, ‘Do you want us to call an ambulance?'” she explained.
“And I was awake enough to shake my head. And I kept shaking my head because I knew something was really, really wrong. But I didn’t know what it was, and I couldn’t speak.”
Eventually, paramedics arrived and couldn’t believe that Plaza hadn’t taken illegal drugs because they thought she was too young to have a stroke.
“I didn’t actually put anything into my body that day… except birth control,” she continued.
The former “Parks and Recreation” actress was subsequently taken to a local hospital, where she had to wait two hours in the emergency room.
“Physically, I looked fine. But I couldn’t speak and was confused. I couldn’t write either,” she added, explaining that after an examination, the doctor later determined that she had suffered a stroke.
Plaza spent several nights in the stroke unit before being transferred to her home state of Delaware to be near her family.
She attended cognitive therapy sessions for several weeks before returning to New York for fall classes at New York University.
