Hide Your Pregnancy: Difference between revisions
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Nowadays, when an actress gets pregnant, this event is usually written into the show as the character getting pregnant. However, sometimes the writers decide not to include the pregnancy, perhaps because it can't be written in convincingly, it doesn't fit with the storyline, or perhaps it's just that [[Status Quo Is God]]. In this case, they commonly resort to various (ineffective) tricks to avoid the actress' bump being noticed, such as
* The actress wears lots of loose, baggy clothes.
* The sudden, unprecedented wearing of heavy overcoats etc. which are ''much'' too big for her, with absolutely no
* She carries [[Scenery Censor|lots of bags in front of her belly]]
* She sits down a lot; in the late stages of pregnancy, this often entails some sort of blanket over herself to hide the bump. Such "supine shots" are filmed for prolonged periods, with no direct views of her ''ever'' actively getting up or sitting down.
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* The camera shoots her from far away if they need full body shots.
* She suddenly wears ''black.'' Lots and lots of black... without a funeral (or [[The Matrix|Matrix]]) in sight (for clarification - black helps hide the shadow that the actress' suddenly much larger stomach casts, as well as its shape).
* The excessive use of body-doubles for all revealing body-shots with the face conspicuously
* Worst of all, is the attempt of wearing high heels etc. to make her look more height-weight proportionate; this succeeds only in making her appear even more like "the elephant in the room" by towering over all else around her with her increased size. Even worse, when she walks, she typically becomes a lumbering hulk, lurching and teetering around on the heels like Frankenstein's Monster due to her increased height and decreased balance.
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* When Gina Bellman of ''[[Leverage]]'' was pregnant, Sophie's stomach was hidden (in the same episode!) by being in a coffin, oh, and HOLDING A BOMB TO HER STOMACH. At the end of the episode, she goes on a journey to "find herself"; the next episode, she's only present in phone calls from the main team, usually shot from the chest up behind a bar or in the back seat of a cab.
* In the second season of ''[[Life]]'', Sarah Shahi's pregnancy was utilized very well to further the story arc: Dani Reese goes off to interview for a job in the FBI, only to be used as a pawn by people in the conspiracy. This allows for the occasional chest-up shot of her while the rest of the cast is solving the mystery of the week.
* Katey Segal became pregnant twice during the run of ''[[Married... with Children|Married With Children]]'', the first time in season 6, Peg actually was pregnant, it stayed for half a season, then it was [[
* When [[Traylor Howard]] got pregnant during the fourth season of ''[[Monk]]'', she was usually filmed chest up in the usual way. However, in one episode her character Natalie is uncomfortable being around an old, obsessive boyfriend (played by [[Sean Astin]]!) and stuffs a pillow under her shirt so he'll think she's pregnant, allowing them to shoot her normally.
* Completely averted with Kari Byron of ''[[Myth Busters]]'', with the show being a non-fiction science series and all. Because of her pregnancy, she [[Alcohol Is Poison|couldn't participate in the hangover myth.]] Didn't stop her from enjoying Grant and Tory's discomfiture and their [[Hangover Sensitivity]] [[Jerkass|way too much, though]]. She also exercised extra precautions when doing gun myths.
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* In ''[[Numb3rs]]'', while [[Diane Farr]] was pregnant, FBI Agent Megan Reeves was mostly limited to desk jobs.
* In the second half of the fourth season of ''[[The Office]]'', [[Angela Martin]] was strictly confined to her workspace behind a chest height wall due to her pregnancy.
* When [[Amy Poehler]] became pregnant for the second time during ''[[Parks and Recreation]]'', the producers decided to just write and film as many episodes as possible before she had to go on maternity leave, rather than taking a hiatus between the second and third seasons. This resulted in increasing amounts of bump-camouflaging ruffled blouses and creative clipboard and desk placement during the first six episodes of season three. Unfortunately, NBC decided to push back the season première to ''January of 2011'', rather than the expected September
* Olivia Colman in Series 4 of ''[[Peep Show]]'' was carefully filmed to avoid revealing that she was pregnant.
** Averted, however, in the second series of ''[[That Mitchell and Webb Look]]'', filmed around the same time, in which she appears heavily pregnant throughout. Kind of helps that it's a sketch show, however.
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* [[Cynthia Watros]] was pregnant with twins during the second season if ''[[Titus]]'', so her character Erin ended up breaking her leg and being in a wheelchair for several episodes.
* Roma Downey's pregnancy couldn't be written into ''[[Touched By an Angel]]'' for obvious reasons. They went the standard baggy clothes, chest and up shots and lots of hiding behind plants/chairs/Andrew.
* In ''[[Two and A Half Men]]'', one of Charlie's former-girlfriends is shown as supposedly non-pregnant, despite that she's obviously at 8 months, draped utterly non-convincingly in a shawl which conceals
* ''[[Ugly Betty]]'''s Alexis Meade (played by Rebecca Romijn) was written out for the same reason as the ''[[Coronation Street]]'' example above.
* In ''[[The X-Files]]'', Scully wore a lot of trench-coats and stood behind a lot of desks while Gillian Anderson was pregnant. Then she got abducted by aliens while Gillian Anderson was giving birth (i.e. she was absent from that episode). During this time there were a few shots of her being examined aboard the alien ship, including one where it looked like the aliens were pumping her belly full of air. Scully spent the next episode in a coma; by the next episode she was walking and talking again.
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