Hiding pregnant bellies

[Finn]

^or too rigid to overlook things like that.

Imagine how people would react if they cast Nell Carter to play Batman, even though they aren't supposed to notice that she doesn't fit the description and traits of Bruce Wayne that we all are familiar with...

Many in the Deaf community can get upset when a hearing actor play a deaf character on tv or a movie (even if that hearing actor was raised by signing deaf adults, and grew up within the Deaf community). They don't care if it's acting.

Imagine what kind of threads we would be seeing in the new movie forum if Uhura was played by a pregnant Zoe..... "is it Spock's baby?".... "10 reasons it is Kirk's baby vs 10 reasons it is Spock's baby"....

 

[Apophis]

Frasier handled the pregnancy of Jane Leeves interestingly by making the character gain weight due to compulsive overeating. Which they then used to address the point of how Niles had idealized her for years and now that they were together she couldn't live up to his mental image of her. It was quite an interesting plot point for several episodes and dealt with a very real problem that existed between those characters (since the Niles/Daphne thing was really only ever supposed to have been a running joke).

 

[Stevil2001]

I thought it was funny that after shooting around Roxann Dawson's pregnancy, they then had the character be pregnant a couple years later. Fake a not-pregnancy and then fake a pregnancy!

Wasn't a pregnancy the reason Amanda Tapping was replaced by Claudia Black on SG-1 for five episodes?

 

[Starbreaker]

I thought one of the recent most funniest in your face examples was a few years back on How i met your mother when Alyson Hannigan got pregnant and in one episode entered an eating contest, won and they showed the entire belly

I remember when she and Cobie Smulders were pregnant at the same time. They were always in huge coats or standing behind bags or doors or doing other weird things. But it was even funnier when Lily wouldn't hang out with the gang for weeks because Barney told a dirty joke went Hannigan went on maternity leave.

 

[Christopher]

Many in the Deaf community can get upset when a hearing actor play a deaf character on tv or a movie (even if that hearing actor was raised by signing deaf adults, and grew up within the Deaf community). They don't care if it's acting.

But that's not about character authenticity, it's about inclusive hiring practices. They don't want to see deaf actors discriminated against by having roles they'd be ideally suited for go to hearing actors instead.

Wasn't a pregnancy the reason Amanda Tapping was replaced by Claudia Black on SG-1 for five episodes?

Yes. And then Claudia Black got pregnant and they wrote it into her storyline.

 

[Sheep]

I thought one of the recent most funniest in your face examples was a few years back on How i met your mother when Alyson Hannigan got pregnant and in one episode entered an eating contest, won and they showed the entire belly

I'm catching up on this show now after having missed most of the last 4 seasons and thought they weren't even trying to hide her pregnancy at all. The hot dog eating contests were pretty funny but otherwise they don't seem to be trying at all with the usual tricks like showing her with something covering her stomach like a pillow, behind some objects, etc.--she's wearing baggy clothes but looks a few months pregnant.

 

[RoJoHen]

So here's a hypothetical follow-up question: What kinds of stories would we have missed out on if certain actresses had not gotten pregnant? How would your favorite shows have changed?

Would the O'Briens have ever had a second child? Would the Ori find a different way to try and take over the galaxy? Would Phoebe's brother ever have children of his own?!

 

[Dantheman]

The saddest example of this, to me, was when Katey Sagall became pregnant on Married with Children. They wrote her pregnancy into the plot, along with her neighbor, but then she miscarried IRL. They explained that away by having an "It was all a dream" episode. Filming that must have been hard as hell for Katey.

Later on, when Katey became pregnant again, they wrote Peggy out of the show by having her go live with her family in Wanker County, Wisconsin (to tend to her mother after having a heart attack), and they would film bits of Peggy calling the family back home on one of those old-style phones that hung on a wall with separate mouth and ear pieces, but in close-up so you didn't see Katey Sagal's belly.

After what happened the first time, they probably didn't want to take any chances, not to mention it probably put less stress on Katey.

 

[Trekker4747]

On Friends Phoebe would have never gotten pregnant (whether or not her half-brother would have had children on his own is irrelevant as the children never became much of a plot point after Phoebe had them. In fact I think we only see them one other time late in the series when Monica and Chandler are trying to have children.)

But there's a deeper impact this could have had. At the end of that season Phoebe stays home in NYC while the rest of the gang (sans Rachel) travels to London for Ross's wedding. Rachel stays home under the pretense that she's going to care for Phoebe. Rachel, of course, later decides to go.

If Phoebe wasn't pregnant she likely would have gone to London as well meaning a different reason for Rachel staying behind would need to be invented and it would have made the following situation between the gang, Monica and Chandler hooking up, and everything that happens in London more interesting. (And, IIRC the story reasons for Phoebe not going to London were the same IRL as filming took place in London and the really pregnant Lisa Kudrow couldn't fly.)

In Seinfeld it may have had a similar impact on a running storyline. During her real-world maternity leave Julia Louis Deryfus missed the first batch of shooting on Seinfeld. In the story she was said to be staying over-seas with her boyfriend who was a therapist. The therapist was treating a patient (Crazy Joe Devola) who becomes a recurring problem for Jerry over the course of the seasons as he got off his meds while his therapist was away with Elaine.

Had JLD not been pregnant they likely wouldn't have had her in London and out of the first few episodes making her a bit more involved in the early development in Jerry's NBC pilot/pitch and the character of Joe Devola may never had been created (or at least would have been created differently.)

 

[sojourner]

Many in the Deaf community can get upset when a hearing actor play a deaf character on tv or a movie (even if that hearing actor was raised by signing deaf adults, and grew up within the Deaf community). They don't care if it's acting.

But that's not about character authenticity, it's about inclusive hiring practices. They don't want to see deaf actors discriminated against by having roles they'd be ideally suited for go to hearing actors instead.

That's like saying blue eyed people should be upset when a brown eyed actor wears contacts to change eye color.

 

[Gil T.Azell]

When Gate McFadden was pregnant during the fourth season of TNG, her character wore a lab coat over her uniform.

 

[Christopher]

But that's not about character authenticity, it's about inclusive hiring practices. They don't want to see deaf actors discriminated against by having roles they'd be ideally suited for go to hearing actors instead.

That's like saying blue eyed people should be upset when a brown eyed actor wears contacts to change eye color.

No, it's not even remotely like that, because blue-eyed people are not a minority group that's historically been subjected to discrimination or exclusion. It's a nice fantasy to imagine a world where hiring discrimination is nonexistent and ethnic differences and disabilities are seen as no different from eye color, but it's grievously irresponsible and dishonest to pretend we currently live in such a world, because there are still very real injustices that we need to be aware of and take a stand against if we ever hope to create that discrimination-free world.

 

[sojourner]

^OK, how about red hair people? They historically have been discriminated and excluded. Don't see many of them getting upset when an actor gets a dye job.

I would guess that most actors are chosen for how well they will be perceived in the role. Not whether they actually share traits with the character. Does every jewish character have to be portrayed by a jew? muslims? paraplegics?

Hire the best actor for the part. If the actual deaf person thinks they should get it, then they should do the best audition.

 

[Christopher]

You just don't get it. You're not even trying.

 

[Deckerd]

It's a nice fantasy to imagine a world where hiring discrimination is nonexistent and ethnic differences and disabilities are seen as no different from eye color, but it's grievously irresponsible and dishonest to pretend we currently live in such a world, because there are still very real injustices that we need to be aware of and take a stand against if we ever hope to create that discrimination-free world.

Given that television and film recruitment is 99% appearance and 1% talent, it's not just disabled people who are discriminated against.

 

[TheSeeker]

Recently finished watching season four of Deep Space Nine. So far, I think Nana Visitor's pregnancy was handled very well. They basically utilised it in a positive way for the characters of Nerys and the O'Briens, giving them some nice scenes together, and the in-mythology explanation made a lot of sense in that it addressed Kira's pregnancy without allowing the show to be pulled off-course.

I always thought that was a very creative way to address the pregnancy. I haven't seen an unexpected pregnancy handled better since then.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I've always thought it was odd the way they were hiding Jane Leeves' pregnancy by making Daphne on Frasier eat a lot, especially considering the body doesn't react the same way to a pregnancy vs fat gain. It came across as really awkward.

 

[Spot's Meow]

I prefer it when they write it in to the show, or if that just wouldn't make sense for the character, to have them leave the show for a little while, unless the belly isn't very big and they can hide it really well. I just hate it when they do a bad job of hiding it or it becomes really obvious, because it distracts me from the actual plot and takes me out of the "illusion" that these are real people and not just actors playing characters. I want to forget that the real world exists when watching TV or movies, so seeing a pregnant character who they are obviously trying to cover up just pulls me right out of the story.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

On CSI Miami when Emily Proctor was pregnant they just reduced her screen time. She didn't appear in a few episodes and when she did appear she was either sitting at a desk or standing behind a lab table. But you could tell she was pregnant because her face got a little puffier.

 

[Christopher]

I've always thought it was odd the way they were hiding Jane Leeves' pregnancy by making Daphne on Frasier eat a lot, especially considering the body doesn't react the same way to a pregnancy vs fat gain. It came across as really awkward.

But what redeemed it is that they implicitly admitted it was awkward. They knew the audience knew they were covering up a pregnancy, so they were very wink-wink, nudge-nudge about it, inserting in-jokes about it so the audience would feel they were in on the joke and be more willing to play along. Like the example cited in the TV Tropes page I linked to, how when Daphne was away at a fat farm at the time Leeves gave birth, Niles came back from visiting her and said she's lost "nine pounds, twelve ounces."