If a TV series goes on long enough, it’s bound to have at least one pregnancy storyline. It’ll happen for one of two reasons. Either the show has figured it’s time to spice things up with a baby, or at least one actress on the series has decided to start a family of their own.
Though the reason for a pregnancy plot may end up being relatively simple, the quality of these arcs vary wildly. It’s assumed, and not without solid evidence, that a baby can ruin a show.
A pregnancy and the resulting baby completely change the DNA of a TV series and it’s not always for the better.
The blame can easily fall at the feet of the real-life pregnancy of the actress, as the show had little choice but to integrate the baby into the series or oddly hide it. Yet that’s not the case.
While some of the worst and most rushed pregnancy storylines have been because of real-world reasons, storylines where the pregnancy is 100% fake have been just as guilty of shoddy writing.
The exact opposite is also true, as real pregnancies have produced some fantastic stories.
The only real determination of what makes a good TV pregnancy storyline is the writing and acting that goes into it. It has very little to do with how authentic the actual pregnancy was for the actor.
So with that in mind, here are the 15 TV Pregnancies That Were Were Real (And 15 That Were Fake).
Real: Emily Deschanel in Bones
Emily Deschanel starting a family with her husband affected her Bones character Temperance Brennan not once, but twice.
Deschanel first became pregnant during season 7, when Brennan and David Boreanaz’s Seeley Booth had been together but weren’t really a couple.
The baby forced Brennan and Booth together earlier than anyone on Bones probably expected and eventually led to them getting married after the birth of their daughter.
When Emily Deschanel became pregnant a second time, Brennan and Booth were already married on the show.
The second pregnancy was much easier to incorporate than the first but one could argue that the only reason why Brennan and Booth had children was because of Deschanel.
Fake: Jennifer Aniston in Friends
The year-long arc of Friends season 8 is about Rachel becoming pregnant with her ex-boyfriend Ross’ child.
At the end of season 8, Rachel has a daughter named Emma and there’s a lot of hemming and hawing if she’ll be with Ross or new love interest Joey.
It’s strange, if not a wholly original story. By the time of Friends’ airing, unexpectedly pregnancies were old news.
It happened purely because the show thought it would be a good idea.
Jennifer Aniston was never pregnant during the filming of Friends, and as far as the public knows, she has never been pregnant or even had a desire to have children.
Real: Chelsea Peretti in Brooklyn Nine-Nine
There’s no real reason why Brooklyn Nine-Nine had to write Chelsea Peretti’s real-life pregnancy into the series.
Peretti announced her pregnancy after the season 3 finale where her character, Gina Linetti, had been hit by bus.
In addition, co-star Melissa Fumero hid her pregnancy behind suspiciously large bags for an entire season.
Fans must have been shocked to find out that the father of Gina’s baby was Boyle. It’s hilarious that show-runner would use Chelsea’s pregnancy to their advantage to give fans a side-splitting revelation.
Yet Brooklyn Nine-Nine did make their wackiest character a mother.
Gina was revealed to be pregnant halfway through season 4 (after surviving her bus incident). The father was left a mystery until the season 4 finale when it was revealed to Milton Boyle, who was played by Ryan Phillipe.
Fake: Mindy Kaling in The Mindy Project
Mindy Kaling caused a bit of celebrity commotion in recent years by becoming pregnant in real-life.
She has never revealed the father of her child and is raising her daughter on her own, as Mindy likes to keep her private life private.
Yet in a twist of fate, her sitcom alter ego went through her own single mother pregnancy, although the fictional Mindy gave birth to a boy, not a girl.
At the end of season 3, it was revealed that Dr. Mindy Lahiri had accidentally become pregnant with her OBY-GYN co-worker and new boyfriend, Danny Castellano.
The central premise being that it was funny that two OBY-GYNs, of all people, were dealing with an unplanned pregnancy.
Real: Katey Sagal in Married… With Children
Sadly, this example is one filled with a lot of tragedy. During the filming of season 6 of Married… With Children, Katey Sagal, who played Peg Bundy, was pregnant.
The show wrote the somewhat unexpected pregnancy into the show, with Peg becoming pregnant at the same time as neighbor Marcy.
The plan was for Peggy to really give birth. However, Katey Sagal’s baby was born six weeks early and was stillborn.
Out of respect for Sagal’s grief, the decision was made to end the pregnancy storyline and explain it away as a “nightmare” that Peggy’s husband Al had been having.
Fake: Dianna Agron in Glee
This is another fake pregnancy that doesn’t come as shock to most fans, as it was baked into the character’s origins.
In the Glee pilot, head cheerleader Quinn doesn’t reveal she’s pregnant. However, shortly into season 1, Quinn revealed that she was pregnant with the supposed child of her boyfriend Finn.
Spoiler alert: she wasn’t. The real baby daddy was Finn’s insufferable best friend, Puck.
Dianna Argon’s may not have been pregnant, but her performance was believable.
Throughout the first season, Quinn’s pregnancy and baby was a huge source of drama. Quinn eventually gave her baby up for adoption. This is because unlike actress Dianna Agron, who was 23 at the time, Quinn was a child who couldn’t raise another child.
Real: Candice King in The Vampire Diaries
From a fake teenage pregnancy, we move to a real teenage pregnancy– well, in a sense anyway. The storyline hat saw Candice King’s character, Caroline, become pregnant was rooted in the actress’ real life pregnancy.
King had just married her husband and wanted to have children. The only problem was that that her character Caroline was a vampire who became deceased when she was a teenager.
The Vampire Diaries had to work very, even stupidly, hard to fit Caroline’s pregnancy into the show.
Even though Caroline’s uterus was unusable, she became the surrogate for the twins of her former teacher Alaric and his girlfriend, Jo. Eventually Caroline even raised the babies as her own.
Fake: Phoebe Tonkin in The Originals
The pregnancy plot that unfolded on The Vampire Diaries spin-off, The Originals, wasn’t nearly as insane. However, it does come in a close second.
Perhaps the reason why this pregnancy made slightly more sense was because actress Phoebe Tonkin wasn’t pregnant. The show wanted to include the pregnancy regardless.
In the pilot for The Originals, it’s revealed that Phoebe Tonkin’s character Hayley, a werewolf, was pregnant with Klaus’, a vampire, baby.
For several reasons, this pregnancy should’ve been impossible, but the rocky relationship between Hayley and Klaus and the child they produced, Hope, arguably became the crux of the entire Originals series.
Real: Molly Ringwald in The Secret Life of an American Teenager
The Secret Life of an American Teenager, one of the most unrealistic depictions of high school life ever, begins in appropriately melodramatic fashion.
Amy, played by Shailene Woodley, became pregnant after sleeping with someone for the first time. Amy’s pregnancy and how every character dealt with it, especially her mother Anne (Molly Ringwald), was the impetus for the series.
Molly Ringwald’s pregnancy shifted the events of The Secret Life of an American Teenager.
It definitely elevated the drama in the show, as Anne had an unplanned pregnancy months after her daughter had given birth to her own child.
However, while filming season 2, Molly Ringwald became pregnant with twins. So, out of relatively nowhere, Anne followed in Amy’s footsteps and had her own unexpected pregnancy.
The twist did fit the insanity of the show, but it only really happened because of Ringwald’s own pregnancy.
Fake: Elizabeth Banks in Scrubs
One of the more bizarre storylines on Scrubs is when J.D. unexpectedly becomes a father with Kim Briggs, a doctor who he’s only been dating for a very short amount of time.
Kim and J.D. don’t even technically sleep together, but still she becomes pregnant.
It’s so strange that it might seem like Scrubs rushed the storyline because actress Elizabeth Banks was pregnant herself, but that isn’t the case at all.
Scrubs, which had had characters have children before, simply wanted J.D. to have a baby in the weirdest most Scrubs-ian way imaginable.
Real: Gillian Anderson in The X-Files
Scrubs’ weird pregnancy has nothing on The X-Files. The sci-fi series had a pregnancy storyline that only got more unsettling the longer it went on– and it went on for far too long.
When The X-Files first began, Gillian Anderson was pregnant and the idea to re-cast was floating around. They didn’t want her character, Scully, to be pregnant. However, Creator Chris Carter fought to keep Gillian Anderson on the show.
Anderson’s pregnancy was mostly hidden until a late season 1 episode, when her pregnant belly was fully showed.
While being experimented and impregnated by aliens, Gillian Anderson didn’t hide her whole body. This started a gross pattern of Scully becoming impregnated against her will, as she gave unexpected birth at least twice before the series ended.
Fake: Ellen Pompeo in Grey’s Anatomy
Meredith Grey has been pregnant three times throughout the course of Grey’s Anatomy. In none of them was her actress, Ellen Pompeo, pregnant.
During their relationship, Meredith and her husband Derek had two biological children, adopted a child, and had a pregnancy that ended in miscarriage. All of this came about because of story decisions.
The Grey’s Anatomy show-runners missed out on the chance to use Ellen’s pregnancy to their advantage in season 6, though, since Ellen Pompeo was legitimately pregnant then.
In fact, when Ellen Pompeo was pregnant during season 6, Meredith was dressed in large scrubs and was hidden behind clipboards and other suspiciously large objects.
The show definitely could’ve integrated the pregnancy rather easily, as Derek and Meredith had just gotten married. However, it didn’t happen.
Fake: Candice Bergen in Murphy Brown
One of the most groundbreaking TV storylines ever involved a pregnancy. Unlike Lucille Ball on I Love Lucy, this wasn’t because the actress was pregnant.
The ’90s sitcom Murphy Brow had Candice Bergen play the title character. She was a 40-something businesswoman who was trying to get back to her career.
This alone was special, but what really sent things over the edge was when Murphy Brown became pregnant and decided to raise the baby on her own.
It doesn’t sound remarkable, nowadays, but at the time, Murphy Brown’s pregnancy was a huge deal.
So much so that Dan Quayle ranted against the show, claiming that it was a perversion of traditional family values. Ironically, this just made Murphy Brown even more popular.
Real: Alyson Hannigan in How I Met Your Mother
Actress Alyson Hannigan was pregnant twice when her sitcom How I Met Your Mother was on the air.
Even though Hannigan’s character, Lily, was in a committed relationship and/or married to Jason Segel’s Marshall for most of the series, the first pregnancy didn’t make it into the series. It just didn’t fit and, instead, the show decided to cover up it up.
In fact, the HIMYM show-runners showed off Alyson’s pregnant belly as a joke when Lily participated in a hot dog eating contest.
For Hannigan’s second child, the pregnancy was given to Lily as well. Lily and Alyson Hannigan gave birth around the same time. However, while Hannigan had a girl, Lily had a boy.
Fake: Angela Kinsey in The Office
Angela Kinsey, who played Angela Martin (later Schrute) on The Office, was pregnant during the filming of the series. The fictional Angela also had a baby during the show. However, these events didn’t coincide.
Angela Kinsey was pregnant during The Office’s season 4 and the show found rather obvious ways to hide the pregnancy. Kinsey would be positioned behind filing cabinets, filmed behind a desk, or otherwise hidden in the background.
With the fake pregnancy, Angela was very much front and center to an obnoxious degree. However, there was good reason because Jenna Fischer and her character Pam were pregnant at the same time.
Real: Jenna Fischer in The Office
The fictional Angela became pregnant in season 8 because Jenna Fischer and her character Pam Beesley were also pregnant.
In the season 8 premiere, it was revealed that Pam and Angela were both pregnant.
The two would engage in a rivalry throughout the season to prove who was the better pregnant lady, mother, and eventually who had the best kid.
Their respective sons even ended up having the same name– Phillip.
Pam was only pregnant because Jenna Fischer was having a baby with her husband, Lee Kirk. Pam had already been pregnant, unexpectedly, in season 6, but baby number two was all because of Fischer.
Fake: Sofia Vergara in Modern Family
The big twist ending of Modern Family season 3 was that Sofia Vergara’s character was pregnant with her older husband Jay’s son.
The twist seemingly came out of nowhere and it would be easy to assume that it happened because Vergara herself was pregnant. However, that wasn’t the case.
While Gloria’s pregnancy was an unexpected twist in Modern Family, it did lead to a ton of funny moments.
Vergara, like her character Gloria, had her one and only son at a very young age. Vergara married her high school boyfriend when she was 18 and gave birth to her son, Manolo, (which is very similar to Gloria’s son Manny) in 1991.
Real: Cynthia Nixon in Sex and the City
Cynthia Nixon isn’t the only actress who became pregnant during Sex and the City. Sarah Jessica Parker, who played heroine Carrie Bradshaw, was also pregnant in the middle of filming Sex and the City.
However, since Carrie becoming a single mother would’ve been the antithesis of the series, Parker’s pregnancy was hidden under oversized clothes.
Interestingly, at the exact same time, Cynthia Nixon’s pregnancy was written into the story with her character, Miranda.
Miranda had a baby with her on-again and off-again boyfriend Steve and the birth of their child finally convinced them to tie a knot.
Fake: Bellamy Young in Scandal
It’s probably for the best that this pregnancy storyline didn’t happen to the actress in real-life. If Bellamy Young’s future hypothetical child ever watched its mother’s Scandal season 2 arc, they’d have a lot of questions.
During Scandal season 2, Mellie Grant convinces her husband Fitzgerald Grant to have a baby with her.
This is because an audio adult tape is leaked of Fitz with his mistress Olivia Pope. Mellie tells Fitz to lie that it’s her on the tape and that they need to seal the lie with an actual child.
It’s not exactly a fairy tale birth.
Real: Marcia Cross in Desperate Housewives
Scandal’s storyline concerning Mellie’s pregnancy is crazy, but it’s a lot saner than what Desperate Housewives did with Bree Van de Kamp. During the filming of Desperate Housewives season 3, Marcia Cross became pregnant with twins.
It was a difficult pregnancy that eventually landed the actress on bed rest.
Desperate Housewives was a scandal-filled soap opera that had its fair share of twists, and thus Bree faking a pregnancy to protect her daughter’s image was just one of many.
However, this was thanks to Marcia’s own pregnancy.
The show was faced with the task of trying to write the pregnancy in and landed on the most crazy explanation: Bree faked a pregnancy.
She appeared to be pregnant but there was no child. It was all a ruse so that Bree could raise her biological grandson (from her teenage daughter) as her own child.
