Bumpy Actors

Reaching the point in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) surrogates for Miles and Keiko O'Brien (Colm Meaney and Rosalind Chao) got me thinking about the ways that actors' real-life pregnancies are met with creative responses in television shows to the extent that whole story arcs reshape the series. Sitcoms such as Frasier and Brooklyn Nine-Nine found ways to re-dress the pregnancies of Jane Leeves and Melisa Fumero through Daphne Moon's stress-induced weight gain and Amy Santiago's love of bulky folders, undercover work as a pregnant prison inmate, and then later a pregnancy for her and Jake (Andy Samberg). It is in science-fiction, though, where the creative explanations for or concealment of a bump really shine.

As I've mentioned many times on this blog, I spent much of my teens and twenties as a committed X-phile. In the show's lore, its whole structure and story arc underwent radical change when Gillian Anderson became pregnant towards the end of filming season 1 of The X-Files. This challenge was initially met with chunky 1990s fashions, head-and-shoulders framing and obstructing props to hide Anderson's growing bump. So far, so predictable. But then came the audacious move in episodes 5 and 6 of season 2 to place Special Agent Dana Scully in proximity with multiple abductee and former FBI agent Duane Barry (Steve Railsback). This leads to Scully's abduction and procedures being performed on her that we later find were the extraction of her ova, setting in motion a long-term story arc still playing out nine seasons and two movies later. Anderson returned to work soon after birthing, and spent much time in a hospital bed as the returned and unconscious Scully. So much of the show's story arc was originally intended to centre on Special Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) with Scully's role being somewhat of a foil for his desire to believe and find proof for unexplained phenomena. But the storyline around Anderson's pregnancy caused a shift that made the arc bend around Scully as much as it did around Mulder. This was in 1994. I wonder how many lost opportunities there had been previously when pregnant actors found themselves out of work or sidelined.

I don't know if Anderson/Scully is the first case of such a fundamental change to a show to creatively accommodate a main actor's pregnancy, but it wouldn't surprise me if that were so. Visitor's pregnancy in 1996 shapes many of the character sub-stories in seasons 4 and 5 of DS9. Keiko O'Brien, who gave birth to Molly (Hana Hatae) with the help of Worf (Michael Dorn) on the Enterprise in The Next Generation, returns to the space station from a long tour of botanical research on the planet of Bajor and Molly announces she's going to have a brother. A time later when conducting research elsewhere, the shuttle Keiko is on incurs damage. Her injuries are too extensive to continue the pregnancy and it is too soon for the foetus to survive outside the womb. With consent, Dr Bashir (Alexander Siddig, the real-life father) transfers the foetus to Major Kira, who is Bajoran, not human, but the only other possessor of a uterus onboard. In other words, she is a vessel within a vessel in this emergency. Meanwhile, hilarity ensues as their characters bicker over whose fault Nerys's newfound condition is.

Such a chain of events may well be an outlandish contrivance, but being set in the 24th century where you can also get full spinal transplants and recover fully (physically, at least) from being assimilated by the Borg, it is also plausible in the story space/universe, and leads to some interesting explorations of surrogacy and the different effects pregnancy can have on different bodies. The conflict giving way to intimacy between Kira and Miles O'Brien also subtly explains Kira's absence for a time to allow Visitor brief parental leave and a light return as the still-pregnant Kira while other character's arcs undergo significant development. This is not to say Visitor and her character are being left out. For readers who haven't seen Deep Space Nine, Kira is central from the first episode and is continually developed throughout. The pregnancy really just sees a brief and different shift in gear for her.

Now, as fond as I was of Frasier (and in barfly Morn - Mark Allen Shepherd - there is a nod to Cheers in DS9), I'll take these sci-fi pregnancy-driven arcs over the far less plausible and fatphobic approach taken to Leeves's pregnancy. I haven't seen it yet, but it was good to hear that rather than shutting down production or recasting, Felicity Jones's pregnancy was incorporated into The Midnight Sky (dir. George Clooney, 2020). Long may sci-fi's recognition that pregnant bodies are also working bodies occupied first and foremost by autonomous people continue.   

  

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