Busy working moms often live by the mantra, “The show must go on.” And in Hollywood, it’s no different, even when you’re in front of the camera.
If the stars were to align properly, a pregnant celebrity would play an expecting character, but that’s rarely the case — especially with storylines that exclude the possibility of a pregnancy. Just ask Courteney Cox, whose beloved Friends character Monica Geller struggled with infertility shortly before the actress became pregnant with her daughter Coco while married to her (now ex) husband David Arquette.
Over time, film and television sets have learned very creative workarounds to hide celebrity baby bumps — when Mandy Moore was pregnant with her son, August ‘Gus’ Harrison while filming season five of her hit TV show This is Us, the production schedule was moved up to film certain scenes before her pregnancy became too obvious. And in 2002, while filming season five of Sex and the City, Sarah Jessica Parker was expecting her first child with husband Matthew Broderick, a happy event that didn’t quite jive with the child-free ambitions of her character Carrie Bradshaw. So Parker covered up with looser-fitting designer clothing, carried bigger handbags, and the entire season was cut short by a few episodes.
These working mamas aren’t the only ones who pulled off a covert pregnancy so fans wouldn’t be confused by their burgeoning bumps. Read on for the artistic ways Hollywood has hid other celebrity pregnancies from the public eye while filming television and movies. It truly takes a village!
A version of this article was published in 2022.
Vanessa Hudgens
Vanessa Hudgens was pregnant while filming Bad Boys: Ride or Die, and she got some advice from a surprising celebrity. Co-star Will Smith didn’t want her to be stressed about shooting around her bump.
“I was like, ‘No, don’t worry. You’ll always be able to tell your child that they were in this scene with you,’” the Men in Black star revealed.
Hilary Swank
Hilary Swank went to hilarious lengths to keep the early days of her pregnancy a secret from the production team of Alaska Daily. Her character in the show is a jogger, but Swank, who is pregnant with twins, had no intentions of tying up her laces for scenes that could take hours to shoot.
In an appearance on The Late Late Show, the Golden Globe-nominated actor said she told the team she was bad at running and needed a stunt double. Calling her bluff, they asked Swank to prove it.
“And I was like, ‘Ok how do I look like real bad — I’m not a great runner to start with — but I really gotta sell this so I can use this double,’” she said. “These four men all looked at each other and went, ‘Yeah, you need a stunt double.'”
What a genius mama-to-be!
Sarah Jessica Parker
Sarah Jessica Parker’sSex and the City character Carrie Bradshaw never aspired to be a mother on the iconic HBO series. But when the show entered its fifth season in 2002, Parker became pregnant with her son James Wilkie Broderick, whom she shares with husband Matthew Broderick.
Producers concealed Parker’s lower half by dressing her in baggier dresses and eventually cutting the season short when Parker’s belly grew too big to ignore.
In 2009, five years after the television show ended, Parker and Broderick welcomed twins Marion Loretta Elwell and Tabitha Hodge through surrogacy.
Kerry Washington
In 2016, during the sixth season of the popular television series Scandal, star Kerry Washington became pregnant with her son Caleb, whom she shares with her husband Nnamdi Asomugha.
The show aired mid-season due to Washington’s pregnancy and after the birth, the actress revealed in a Good Morning America interview how producers successfully hid her baby bump during filming. “You could play a really fun game for the first five episodes of ‘find the bump,'” she said. “After that, the bump is gone. Cause we shot five episodes before I gave birth.” She also revealed that set workers covered her bump “behind flowers, behind Prada purses, behind big coats and capes.”
Kerry Washington was also pregnant with her first child Isabelle in 2014 and the wardrobe department stepped up. “I’m just grateful for how hard everybody has worked to maintain the authenticity of this character in this world,” she said in an April 2014 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I’m grateful to [costume designer] Lyn Paolo and all our producers. I feel very grateful that we have such an amazing team that was able to protect the character within the context of what the actress was going through.”
January Jones
January Jones played Betty Draper (the wife of Don Draper) on the television show Mad Men and although the fictional pair were finished having children by season five, Jones became pregnant with her son Xander, giving birth to him in September 2011.
However, in light of Jones’ changing body, her character was given a storyline in which she experienced weight gain, depicted through a so-called fat suit, which was meant to show a side effect of her benign tumor.
“I started this season of Mad Men eight months pregnant, and I finished it with a 5-month-old,” Jones told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012. “It was bizarre. And I was in seven hours of prosthetics every morning, trying to rip off a fake chest piece so I could breastfeed. […] I loved [the fat suit]. I didn’t want to try to hide it, I thought it would become comical and weird. And I also didn’t want to have the character become pregnant because it just wouldn’t make sense. It was definitely difficult, but I love what he did with the character’s story.”
Mandy Moore
Actress Mandy Moore was pregnant with son August (whom she shares with husband Taylor Goldsmith along with kids Oscar and Louise) while filming season five of the television show This is Us. And director Ken Olin made sure that he accommodated Moore during her pregnancy. “I don’t know how much it actually delayed the story, the writers all seem determined to tell these stories even though it’s very challenging because there are so many restrictions on dealing with babies,” Olin told People in March 2021. “And then dealing with Mandy’s pregnancy, how we were going to accommodate her and make sure that she was safe.”
The director also adjusted the filming schedule so Moore’s baby bump wouldn’t appear too large on camera. “We actually started shooting this episode, I think, in December so that we could accommodate Mandy’s pregnancy before she got too big,” he said.
Courteney Cox
Courteney Cox’s character Monica Geller on the iconic sitcom Friends struggled with infertility, so in 2003 when Cox became pregnant with daughter Coco Arquette (whom she shares with ex-husband David Arquette) her pregnancy couldn’t be written into the script.
Cox was provided with loose-fitting clothing to play Geller and Coco was born less than one month after the final episode aired in May 2004.
Claire Danes
Homeland star Claire Danes shares sons Cyrus and Rowan with her husband Hugh Dancy — and Danes filmed the television series during both pregnancies. “I was pregnant for a lot of filming,” Danes said in a 2020 interview with USA Today. “With Cyrus, I started filming in my second trimester. I was eight months pregnant when we finished with the season.”
The actress noted how her obvious bump was handled in post-production. “With Rowan, I was filming during the first and second trimester. So, I got it from both ends. I got the nausea and fatigue, and then the huge belly they had to digitally erase.”
Halle Berry
Halle Berry became pregnant with son Maceo (whom she shares with ex-husband Olivier Martinez) while filming X-Men: Days of Future Past. “I was three months pregnant,” Berry said in a 2014 interview on the former talk show, The Queen Latifah Show. “It was different. I had to shoot really fast.” And fitting into her costumes was not easy. “Two weeks was about as much as I could do before I was busting out of the suit.”
Berry is also mom to daughter Nahla Ariela, who she shares with ex-partner Gabriel Aubry.
Amy Poehler
Poehler was expecting son Archie with now ex-husband Will Arnett while filming the television show Parks and Recreation so producers changed the filming schedule during seasons two and three.
Archie was born in October 2008. According to Vulture, the show delayed its normal summer hiatus at the time in order to finish some episodes of season three, before Poehler went on maternity leave.
Poehler and Arnett also share Abel James Arnett, who was born in 2010.
Pin It!
Leave a Comment