Leah Remini gain some significant pounds while on King of Queens. I always assumed she got preggo in real life, but I don’t know that for sure.
Blythe Danner filmed an episode of Columbo while she was pregnant, but it was early in the pregnancy and didn’t show yet.
The child she was carrying? Gwyneth Paltrow.
I think the main problem with this is, it’s going to get to the point where the actress in question just isn’t in any condition to do any acting where the pregnancy isn’t noticeable. Either they go to the “hide behind things” bit, or, if appropriate, they have a flashback to when the character was pregnant. (Kate & Allie did this with Susan St. James.)
Another alternative: end the season early, or start it late. 30 Rock had a hiatus when Tina Fey was pregnant, and one season of Parks & Recreation had to start filming earlier than planned because Amy Poehler was pregnant.
When Zooey Deschanel was pregnant, rather than going through the contrivances of having her stand behind stuff, they put her character on jury duty and then sequestered the jury. Boom! Now she’s gone for as long as she needs to be gone.
Problem was, in my humble opinion, showing what Jess, her character, would do on jury duty could very well have provided the best moments of a series that had already seen most of its best moments in earlier seasons. Wasted opportunity.
Agreed - I’ve been saying the same thing for years. I think a comedy could do some really fun things with the concept. If Friends could go a season or two completely ignoring how much weight Matthew Perry gained, they could do the same with a pregnant actress.
I mentioned her upthread. Like you, I noticed a weight gain, but then I either stopped watching or forgot about it. It wasn’t until years later that I read something that confirmed it. I vaguely remember tabloids or people talking about her weight but not that she was pregnant. Kind of shitty, actually.
Coincidentally, I just turned on 30 Rock (season 6) and it looks very much like Tina Fey is pregnant. Her face is rounder and her boobs are bigger. She’s wearing a cardigan but that’s not unusual for her character.
The problem with ignoring a pregnancy is that pregnant women look pregnant. It doesn’t seem right that everyone would simply ignore a continuing character’s pregnancy - you wouldn’t do that with a coworker (the polite thing, of course, is to wait for her to announce it.) Assuming the producers don’t want to warp the characters’ relationships beyond normal social interactions the audience expects, that leaves either a) writing the pregnancy into the story b) putting the actor in a fat suit or c) trying to hide it.
During Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ appearance on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Seinfeld mentioned that they wanted to use this gambit during her pregnancy, but she burst into tears when he suggested a fat plotline so they dropped it.
It made the whole avocado bathroom sketch that much more harrowing, I know that.
Ignoring the OP but going with the flow of comments presenting exactly what the OP did not ask for, Yvonne Strahovski was pregnant during one season of the Handmaid’s Tale. Given the show is based around totalitarian societies emerging in response to a crisis in female fertility this was more than awkward.
I can’t agree with those who think it can’t be done. Sure, maybe with something super serious and realistic. But in comedies or other shows where we’re already suspending our disbelief heavily anyway? It seems not that big a deal.
That said, what I’m most interested in is the next step, where they start using CGI to edit out the pregnant belly. If your shot is fairly static, it doesn’t seem like it would be that hard with today’s tech—not relative to some stuff they do in TV shows today. Especially if they’re already using body doubles.
I can recall at least one case where the exact opposite happened. On Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, there was an ongoing story arc about Keiko O’Brien getting pregnant, but then Nana Visitor (Major Kira) got pregnant in real life, so they had Keiko’s baby wind up in Kira’s womb via transporter shenanigans and rewrote some subsequent episodes to be about Kira dealing with being a surrogate mother.
And the actor who played Dr. Bashir was the father of Nana Visitor’s baby, so there was this dialogue
Kira Nerys : [pointing at her pregnant belly] Don’t forget, this… is still your fault.
Bashir : My fault?
Kira : You performed the transfer from Keiko to me.
i remember that and I thought it was some space deity …
That was my thought as well. And if they wouldn’t do it on a traditional sitcom, I think it would be hilarious if an animated show like “Futurama” did it. Or even better, they could draw the character slightly larger and have her stand behind things, hold large bags, etc.
I dunno about that. Friends had an arc where Monica and Chandler struggled to adopt since Monica couldn’t bear children - that lost some of its impact when Cox was clearly pregnant.
Sign me up - that’s a fantastic idea. It should only be when the voice actress is pregnant, though.
An arc which had been inspired by the problems Cox had conceiving in real life.
In the Office Ladies podcast, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey (Pam and Angela) discuss how Angela was real-life pregnant during one season, and at times giggle at scenes where the belly-hiding was particularly awkward or unsuccessful. (As a repeated but not obsessive watcher of the show, I can’t say I ever noticed, but I tend to be pretty unobservant.)