# Dealing with pregnancies on tv series **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 3, 2019, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dealing-with-pregnancies-on-tv-series/844310 "2019-12-03T13:57:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2019, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dealing-with-pregnancies-on-tv-series/844310/41 "2019-12-03T20:00:45Z")
I have seen at least one case of an actress on a soap opera temporarily replaced by another actress while she was pregnant. That was Beth Ehlers on Guiding Light in the early 90’s. The other actress played the character for a few months, and then Beth returned after having the baby. Since actors are frequently switched out on soaps, it’s not something that’s related specifically to pregnancy. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2019, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dealing-with-pregnancies-on-tv-series/844310/42 "2019-12-03T21:55:49Z")
> [@Marine\_One](#): > > I think the shows should run this before every show. The actress should say: > > “I’m pregnant but the actors are going to ignore this. So are you! None of this stupid hiding it wth pillows or camera angles or huge clothes. If you don’t like it, tough!! So enjoy the show.” I’ve said this many times here before. (Although with a producer or some such making the point.) ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2019, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dealing-with-pregnancies-on-tv-series/844310/43 "2019-12-03T22:11:48Z")
Lisa Bonet got pregnant and disappeared from[A Different World](https://web.archive.org/web/20060210085528/http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/D/htmlD/differentwor/differentwor.htm). Quit? Fired? Contract bought out? who knows. > [@Treppenwitz](#): > > Incidentally, first show to have a married couple sharing a bed. The second, according to legend, was The Flintstones. Actually it was [The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.](https://youtu.be/c4Ow8lKT7Mw?t=801) They were pretty blase about it. Harriet (who was quite feisty in real life) reportedly said, “We sleep in the same bed at home, so why shouldn’t we sleep in the same bed on the show?” ---
**Author:** ![jrbor76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9e8a1a/32.png) [@jrbor76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jrbor76)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2019, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dealing-with-pregnancies-on-tv-series/844310/44 "2019-12-03T22:31:37Z")
Another example I can’t believe hasn’t been brought up yet – on _How I Met Your Mother_, they used a lot of props and loose clothing to initially cover up Alyoson Hannigan’s bump, then memorably shot a scene where she won a hot-dog eating contest to show the bump as is, then finally shot a scene where she got offended by a joke and literally didn’t show up for the next four weeks/episodes. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2019, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dealing-with-pregnancies-on-tv-series/844310/45 "2019-12-03T23:19:41Z")
Clickbait to the rescue! In addition to some of the people mentioned above, [this article](https://screenrant.com/stars-lost-roles-due-pregnancy/)mentions at least four actors from _General Hospital_, Jamie Lynn Spears, and the scandal-of-its-time, Dana Plato, fired from _Diff’rent Strokes_ because producers really didn’t want a storyline with a pregnant 16 year-old character. [Here are some clips of pregnant actors.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1knHBRVPoYQ) Alyson Hannigan’s belly is #1. ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2019, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dealing-with-pregnancies-on-tv-series/844310/46 "2019-12-03T23:29:17Z")
> [@Ponch8](#): > > When Katey Sagal (Peggy Bundy on _Married with Children_) became pregnant in real life, they filmed numerous episodes in which Peggy was pregnant, much to the consternation of Al. Then, when Sagal had a miscarriage, **Peggy’s pregnancy was written off as a bad dream that Al had.** The bolded part is frequently cited, but I swear I don’t remember **any** explanation being given. There was a big whoop about Peggy and Marcie being pregnant simultaneously. Then Peggy was absent for three episodes\*, and when she came back, it seemed a reset button had been hit. No explanation, dream or otherwise. But perhaps it was a one-sentence reference that I didn’t catch. \*Including a two-part episode that was priceless. Kelly and her bimbette friends had a cable-access talk show that was picked up by a network (home of “Ellen and Her Dog,” “The Homeless Detective,” “Black Cop, White Girl,” “Me and the Shiksa,” and “Amos and Andrew”) then reformatted, then canceled. I wonder if those episodes had already been scheduled, or if Peggy’s absence made it possible to do a two-parter that focused on one of the kids instead of Al and Peg. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dealing-with-pregnancies-on-tv-series/844310/47 "2019-12-04T00:41:22Z")
> [@moojja](#): > > It’s all just rumors, but supposedly Sasha Alexander’s contract was not renewed for NCIS Season 2, because she expressed a desire to start planning for kids. Sasha Alexander herself has stated that she quit because she hadn’t realized the workload that a 24-episode season entails. [cite](https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1188145/NCIS-why-did-Sasha-Alexander-leave-Caitlyn-Kate-Todd-exit-quit-CBS) (Her subsequent series had shorter seasons with fewer episodes.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dealing-with-pregnancies-on-tv-series/844310/48 "2019-12-04T01:07:38Z")
> [@Rilchiam](#): > > The bolded part is frequently cited, but I swear I don’t remember **any** explanation being given. There was a big whoop about Peggy and Marcie being pregnant simultaneously. Then Peggy was absent for three episodes\*, and when she came back, it seemed a reset button had been hit. No explanation, dream or otherwise. But perhaps it was a one-sentence reference that I didn’t catch. Al wakes up in **Al Bundy, Shoe Dick** after dreaming that he sleuthed a big case and earned a big reward. After he’s told that, no, that never really happened, he asks if Bud has actually been trying to make it as a rapper named Grandmaster B (which _also_ turns out to be a dream) and then starts to ask if Peg is actually pregnant, but of course gets interrupted by folks who fill-in-the-blank with _“repulsed by you”_ and _“disappointed, financially and sexually, by you”_. But then, yeah, all that buildup ultimately leads to him asking whether she’s pregnant in the waking world. ---
**Author:** ![LLCoolL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/llcooll/32/3596_2.png) [@LLCoolL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LLCoolL)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dealing-with-pregnancies-on-tv-series/844310/49 "2019-12-04T09:23:09Z")
> [@MrAtoz](#): > > I remember there was some controversy when actress Hunter Tylo was cast on _Melrose Place_, but was fired before filming any episodes after she became pregnant, with Aaron Spelling arguing that she now wouldn’t be able to play the sexy role they had hired her for. As I recall, there was a lawsuit about it, but I don’t know the result. According to this source, Tylo won a $4.8MM dollar jury award. [http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9712/22/melrose.lawsuit/](http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9712/22/melrose.lawsuit/) ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dealing-with-pregnancies-on-tv-series/844310/50 "2019-12-04T10:58:12Z")
> [@Cardigan](#): > > The thing that became clear to me at least was that the proponents of both views didn’t support their arguments with very many examples. _Bones_ and _Bewitched_ were two shows that came up, as well as a couple of soap operas. But this is where you folks come in - can you identify tv shows - from any era - where major female characters became pregnant in real life and how did the producers deal with it? Did they replace the actress with another to play the same role? Eliminate that role or character from the story? Significantly alter the filming schedule? Resort to doing lots of head and shoulder shots and baggy outfits? Write the pregnancy into the script? End the series entirely? The first pregnant woman on American TV was Lucille Ball - firing the star from the show would have been difficult (What were they going to do, call the show _I Love Desi?_) but up until that time pregnancy had always meant the actress lost her job. (This was an era when a married couple were, with rare exception, shown in separate beds with at least a nightstand in between). That was the first time a pregnancy was written into a show. These days how a pregnancy is dealt with varies, even on the same show. As an example, on _Lucifer_ the actress playing Mazikeen (Lesley-Ann Brandt) became pregnant and they did the whole loose-clothes/positioning, then the actress/character was absent from the program for part of a season. Then the actress who plays Dr. Martin (Rachel Harris) became pregnant and her pregnancy was written into the series and the resulting kid (fictional kid, not Harris’ actual kid) even became a major plot point. It’s a reality that some characters aren’t very compatible with a real life pregnant - the Mazikeen, character, for example, engages in both very athletic fight scenes and tends to wear sexy/stripper/fetish clothing. _Maybe_ a demon could do that, but human women have issues with that. On the other hand, Dr. Martin’s character is NOT that sort of gymnast-ninja and pregnancy is not incompatible with her normal activities. On the flip side of that - Gal Godot did the reshoots for _Wonder Woman_ while five months pregnant, with CGI used to edit out the bump and Gadot doing some quite athletic stuff while five months pregnant… but Godot is an incredibly fit woman who used to be a fitness instructor for the Israeli military so I would expect her to be an outlier. And a movie has the CGI budget to edit a baby bump out of scenes that TV series generally do not. And, again, Godot was the big star of the movie, a background/minor character is most likely going to be replaced, not CGI’d. In addition, apparently Godot did not find pregnancy disabling - which some women legitimately do, the effects of pregnancy being quite variable and also some pregnancies being complicated by medical issues. ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dealing-with-pregnancies-on-tv-series/844310/51 "2019-12-04T16:32:04Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Al wakes up in **Al Bundy, Shoe Dick** after dreaming that he sleuthed a big case and earned a big reward. After he’s told that, no, that never really happened, he asks if Bud has actually been trying to make it as a rapper named Grandmaster B (which _also_ turns out to be a dream) and then starts to ask if Peg is actually pregnant, but of course gets interrupted by folks who fill-in-the-blank with _“repulsed by you”_ and _“disappointed, financially and sexually, by you”_. But then, yeah, all that buildup ultimately leads to him asking whether she’s pregnant in the waking world. Finally! Thank you. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dealing-with-pregnancies-on-tv-series/844310.md?page=2)