I talked about how Patricia Heaton was pregnant on Everybody Loves Raymond, twice actually. But she sure isn’t the first woman to be pregnant on a sitcom that refused to acknowledge the pregnancy on camera. Of course sometimes they do acknowledge, but that causes other headaches. Like when Lucille Ball was pregnant and couldn’t use the word, for reasons I’ll never understand.
So how do you keep the actress on the show when she is getting bigger and bigger? Well some shows have to resort interesting extremes. Others don’t do very much at all. Here’s a look :
Close Up’s and other Camera Tricks
This is an easy one, but editing and camera tricks help a lot. Pre-production helps to, like how a lot of Amy Poehler’s scenes were filmed in advance on Parks and Recreation. Or how they shortened the season of Sex and the City when Sarah Jessica Parker was pregnant. There are close-up’s like the one’s I mention in my ELR reviews. You can tell by the tight shots of Debra that something is off.
Hiding Behind Objects
If you can’t hide, then that’s always the way to go. When Shelly Long was pregnant on Cheers she spent quite a lot of time hiding behind the bar. Elaine on Seinfeld was often seen with things in front of her like a pillow when sitting on the couch. Pillow is a popular choice, as we saw Julia Duffy carrying one Newhart. Amy Poehler spemt a lot of time sitting behind desks and tables on Parks and Recreation. Lisa Kudrow’s character was pregnant on Friends, but when she appeared on Mad About You as the non-pregnant Ursula she had to hold a tray in fron of her belly. But the award has to go to The Cosby Show for the way they covered Phylicia Rashad’s pregnancy. She was blocked by anything from grocery bags to a raised counter to a big teddy bear for no reason whatsoever!
Cover Up With…Anything
Sometimes you just can’t have the character hiding behind things all day. So you have to cover the character up with things they would usually not wear. For instance on Star Trek Voyager Torres was suddenly wearing a jacket when Roxann Dawson was pregnant. Gates McFadden also hid behind a jacket on TNG. On Friends we saw Courtney Cox wearing all kinds of baggy clothing that didn’t make sense. Sex and the City saw Sarah Jessica Parker wearing very odd dresses mean to cover her belly. My favorite is how Patricia Heaton was literally wrapped in a blanket for no real reason on Everybody Loves Raymond.
Writing it in, somehow
The easiest thing to do is simply make the character pregnant. Meredith Baxter Birney on Family Ties, Laurie Metcalf and Roseanne herself on Roseanne, Janet Hubert on Fresh Prince, Jenna Fischer on The Office. Course it’s harder for some shows to come with reasons for the character to be pregnant than others. When Rhea Pearlman was pregnant Carla had a fling with Fraser’s mentor on Cheers. They dealt with Markie Posts’s pregnancy on Night Court with Christine having an affair with a cop on which totally contradicted her character. Thankfully on Friends when Phoebe was pregnant with her brother’s babies that did jibe with the character. Then there was DS9, when Nana Visitor was pregnant they did a convoluted plot about Kira carrying the O’Brien’s baby for them. But if making he character pregnant doesn’t work then explain it away somehow! On The Nanny CC said she was gaining weight while also making slight references to the pregnancy as a running gag. On Frasier they did one step beyond, not only did Daphne gain weight but it was turned into a major story arc for the show. The winner for most absurd excuse to show the belly comes from How I Met Your Mother. When Lily entered an eating contest and sported a “food belly” afterward. Only that show could have done that one! The saddest example is from Married with Children. When Katey Sagal became pregnant so did Peg. Until Sagel sadly miscarried, and Peg’s pregnancy became a bad nightmare Al had. That must have been awkward. When she was pregnant a second time they just hid it. Of course if all else fails, just ignore it, the way that Leah Remini’s obvious pregnancy on King of Queens was ignored. Or Julia Louis Dreyfuss’s was in that later season of Seinfeld she was pregnant in.
The Disappearing Character
If you read my articles on ELR you know that I complained a lot because they basically wrote Debra out of a lot of episodes at the height of her pregnancy. But this is not the only show to do this. In fact almost all of the shows that dealt with this had to write the character out when the time came for the baby to be born. Which makes sense, unless the baby is born on the hiatus. Which is why Lisa Kudrow never missed an episode of Friends, speaking of Friends it’s also why Emily disappeared so completely. The amusing part are the reasons for these characters to be absent. X-Files was the craziest, with an alien abduction plot I don’t understand. Usually it’s more reasonable things which are still silly excuses, like Elaine’s inexplicable trips to Europe on Seinfeld. Or on Frasier when Daphne was sent to a fat camp for a few episodes. On The Nanny CC had been sent to a mental hospital (the pregnancy occurring the same time Maxwell and Fran were hooking up on the series making CC’s weight gain and depression believable). One of the worst has to be Meredith Baxter Birney on Family Ties. Elyse all but vanished that season, with references to her being out of town or bedridden. The good news was the character was also pregnant so they didn’t need to come up with a wild story about what made her bedridden. They did that on The Cosby Show. Clair spent a whole episode in a bed (with a whole cut into so her belly would be the right depth) due to a ridiculous off screen injury. Then Clair was told to be traveling anywhere from Hillman College to Washington D.C…for some reason, appearing very briefly if at all. Several episodes that season just had Cliff in them, it was like a totally different show! This is also why Denise was sent to Africa in Season five, to hide Lisa Bonet’s pregnancy. Sometimes real life medical complications play a role in the actress not appearing. Roseanne missed at least one episode of her show due to doctor ordered bed rest. Speaking of bed rest, Will & Grace suffered the worst when Debra Messing had to miss a few weeks because of bed rest. The excuses for Grace not appearing ranged from “we didn’t wake her up” to her not being able to get away from work, which is ridiculous. But the one that was fatal to the show was when Cindy Williams left Laverne and Shirley. Yeah having Shirley pregnant sure wouldn’t have worked (actually the character was pregnant on the show which is why she left in universe also) but with her gone it was just Laverne and…Laverne? Actually there’s more that story, but that’s for another time.
Of course there are lots of time when a pregnancy is totally fake, from Candace Bergen on Murphy Brown to Helen Hunt on Mad About You to Jennifer Aniston on Friends. But the best is when a woman who had to hide her pregnancy one season has to fake being pregnant in another. Meredith Baxter had to be padded up when she returned to Family Ties until Elyse finally gave birth. Roxanne Dawson spent the whole last season of Voyager pretending to be pregnant, after hiding it a few years earlier. And of course after all the turmoil when Debra Messing was pregnant in season eight, what did they do in season 9? Yep Grace was pregnant with Leo’s baby. Finally, one of my favorite gags was on an episode of Growing Pains. When Maggie was pregnant, Joanna Kerns wasn’t really, and in one teaser we see a dream sequence where she comes out of the shower clearly not pregnant and tells Jason it was all a dream. Cute little in joke (and nod to Dallas).
Pregnancy is something almost every series has to deal with it, and the fun is watching the changes in the woman while the characters continue to act like she’s the same. Some shows have fun with it, others just ignore it, but whatever the case it’s something that has been a part of TV history since the very beginning. There are lots of instances I missed, so if I missed one you think should have been mentioned comment below.
