Actress Aubrey Plaza recalls having a stroke which left her unable to move or talk, saying 'it was wild'

The White Lotus star was visiting a friend at the age of just 20 when she suddenly found herself unable to move or talk.

The actress was recalling the incident when she appeared on Sirius XM's Howard Stern Show. She told Stern: "It was wild” and revealed: “It happened mid-sentence."

Plaza, now aged 40, explained that the health issue unfolded while she was attending college at New York University. She had travelled to her friend's apartment, but when she arrived and walked in the door she suddenly found she couldn’t move.

"I took the train to Astoria to have lunch with my friends and I walked into their apartment – I hadn't even taken my jacket off – and it just happened," she said. She went on to say that she was "paralysed" but only for a short amount of time, which she believed to be around a minute.

She said that “the freakiest thing” was [she] forgot how to talk [and] lost [her] motor skills “really briefly”. Paramedics were called, and it was later discovered that the Parks and Recreation actress had suffered a stroke.

She told NPR that her friends had initially thought she was joking when she stood there unable to move because [she] “was always doing something stupid", but they quickly realised something was seriously wrong. She also said that initially because she was so young the paramedics didn't suspect that it was a stroke.

Plaza then spent several days in the the hospital. The doctors realised that she had had a stroke when she was admitted because she was still unable to speak and also unable to put her right hand on her left knee.

"I had expressive aphasia, where I could understand what's happening, but I couldn't talk or communicate," she told The Guardian. "Like, you could say something and I would know what you meant but I couldn't express it or even write it. But at least I could walk.

She concluded to say that she went on to make a full recovery, and also credited her youth with helping her to regain movement and speech quickly. “When it first happened to me I was paralysed, but I was so young that my brain healed itself really fast. I was really lucky in that way."