I recently re-watched some episodes of Life, the NBC drama starring Damian Lewis that ran from 2007 to 2009, and realized something I completely missed the first time around. Sarah Shahi, who played detective Dani Reese, pretty much vanished for the last four or five episodes in the series. Apparently, she was noticeably pregnant in real life, but there was no story line that would explain it away. Or, she just didn’t want to work full time when she neared full term. A replacement character was created, played by Gabrielle Union, while Shahi’s character was supposedly on loan from the LAPD to the FBI.
It reminded me of clips I saw somewhere of a very pregnant Leah Remini wearing baggy clothes and hiding behind tables in episodes of The King of Queens. It’s funny once you realize what’s going on. With Shahi, I was tipped off by her facial features looking much fuller all of a sudden. Then came the realization that there were only showing head shots of her, or her torso being hidden by a desk or jacket etc…
I’m sure this must happen fairly often, and hence this thread looking for other examples.
Tamsin Greig was pregnant whilst filming Black Books, a UK TV series. I never picked it up at the time, but when I got the DVDs, I think someone refers to it in one of the commentaries. They used a lot of scarves and standing behind stacks of books.
Just off the top of my head:
Julia Louis Dreyfus during Seinfeld.
Alyson Hannigan during How I Met Your Mother (and possibly Cobie Smulders too, but I’m not sure).
(unsure) Phylicia Rashad during the Cosby Show?
Katey Sagal during Married with Children (yeah, I know there was a storyline where her character was pregnant that had to be "just-a-dream"ed when she miscarried, but I think she had two later successful pregnancies that she hid)
Daphne on Frasier was pregnant for a while. They ‘hid’ it by turning her into a compulsive eater and then disappearing her to a fat camp for the first half of a season.
Jane Leeves on Frasier. They explained the weight gain by having the character develop a food addiction. When the actress went on maternity leave, the character went to a camp to receive counseling and exercise advice.
Roxann Dawson, who played B’Elanna Torres in Voyager, got to wear what I call “preganancy camouflage” costumes when she had a kid; they gave her a jacket that unzipped down the front and she spent most of the season with it unzipped, standing behind consoles. They never showed her in profile.
They did something similar with Gates McFadden (Dr. Beverly Crusher on ST:TNG).
When Nana Visitor (Major Kira on ST: DS9) got pregnant, they “explained” it by having Keiko O’Brien’s baby beamed into her body due to an emergency. It’s a long (and not entirely convincing) story…
January Jones (Betty Francis, Mad Men) went the same way. They had her gain weight due to boredom and depression. Then the next season she came back with an atrocious body “fat” suit for continuity’s sake and thankfully quickly “lost” the weight.
Way back in the day, I was watching some Kate & Allie retrospective that talked about a season where one of the two was pregnant and showed clips of all the contrived bag/laundry carrying, standing behind counters and wearing novelty costumes they did to keep her in the show.
Pregnant Scarlett Johansson playing non-pregnant Black Widow in The Avengers: Age of Ultron. The movie doesn’t come out til next year, so we don’t know yet how it affects the presentation of the character.
Traylor Howard was pregnant during one season of Monk but her character, Natalie, wasn’t. In one episode, Natalie needed to pretend to be pregnant, though, which I thought was a clever way of dealing with the situation.
Yes. I remember watching a reunion show where they had a blooper montage of Bill moving grocery bags, pillows, etc to expose her stomach during that period.
My favorite is Lena Heady in the first season of Game of Thrones. Watch the scene where she and Robert have their heart-to-heart in “The Wolf and the Lion” and watch her get up from the chair. That’s a pregnant-lady-wobble if I’ve ever seen one. Other than that scene, they hid it well.
Kerry Washington on the last season of “Scandal”. They used the usual tricks, loose clothing, limiting full-body or non-seated views of Olivia, giving supporting actors more screen time instead.
One I didn’t know until recently: Shirley Jones in “The Music Man”. Patrick Cassidy did not get a screen credit, though.