15 TV Pregnancies That Were Were Real (And 15 That Were Fake)

15 TV Pregnancies That Were Were Real (And 15 That Were Fake)
by Derek Stauffer – on Jul 03, 2018 in Lists

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).

30 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.

29 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.

28 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.

27 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.

26 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.

25 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.

24 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.

23 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.

22 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.

21 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.

20 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.

19 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.

18 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.

17 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.

16 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.

15 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.

14 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.

13 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.

12 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.

11 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.

10 Fake: Emilie de Ravin in Lost

It’s a good thing that Emilie de Ravin was not pregnant during the filming of Lost. Although the show did film in Hawaii, a lot was demanded of its actors.

Emilie de Ravin’s character Claire went through a lot with an almost comically large pregnant belly.

However, Claire was pregnant from the pilot of Lost because the story demanded it, not because of a real-life pregnancy.

Interestingly, in Emilie de Ravin’s second big TV acting gig, Once Upon a Time, she did become pregnant both on and off-screen, just like one of her co-stars.

9 Real: Ginnifer Goodwin in Once Upon a Time

Ginnifer Goodwin paralleled her Once Upon a Time character, Snow White, in a lot of ways.

It was on the set of the show that Goodwin met her eventual husband Josh Dallas, who played Snow White’s own husband, Prince Charming. Goodwin and Dallas also had a baby at the exact same time as their fictional selves.

When Ginnifer Goodwin became pregnant with her first child, the show wrote it into the story. Snow White and Prince Charming gave birth to Prince Neal at the same time that their actors had a son named Oliver.

Even though Neal was born at the end of season 3 , he remained a baby until his last appearance on the show, seasons later. Time on Once Upon a Time is very weird thing.

8 Fake: Fran Drescher in The Nanny

At the very tail end of The Nanny, the titular character, who was played by Fran Drescher, gets married to the man she’s nannying for, Maxwell Shieffield, and the two have a baby together.

It was always rather inevitable that Max and Fran would end up together, but their relationship, especially their baby, seemed to happen very quickly.

This might suggest that Fran Drescher was pregnant herself, but that's not the case.

Fran's pregnancy seemed like a rushed plot line that show-runners decided to add in at the last minute.

Fran Drescher wasn’t pregnant, and to date, has never had any children. Fran Fine had kids of her own because it was felt to be the natural progression of the story even though the show was quickly canceled after Max and Fran got together.

7 Real: Charisma Carpenter in Angel

This is, by far, one of the messiest on-screen pregnancies on this list. During Angel season 3, Angel (a vampire) has an unexpected and unexplained son with his vampire sire, Darla.

In Angel season 4, the series dove back into the mystical pregnancy well by having Angel’s love interest, Cordelia, have a baby with Angel’s son, Connor. (Don’t ask.)

The pregnancy took over Cordelia’s body, as she was possessed by a very old, very evil god.

The god ended up giving birth to herself. (Really, don’t ask.) The birth put Cordelia in a coma, which resulted in her being written off the show.

All this insanity happened because actress Charisma Carpenter had become pregnant between seasons.

6 Real: Lisa Kudrow in Friends

Rachel wasn’t the first character in Friends to have a pregnancy storyline. In season 4 of the series, Phoebe agrees to be the surrogate to her half-brother so that he can have children with his wife.

This story was thrown together because Lisa Kudrow was pregnant in real-life.

Phoebe eventually ends up having triplets, but Kudrow just had one son. Although the pregnancy was real, Friends had to put padding onto Lisa Kudrow’s stomach to make it appear like she was having at least two more children.

5 Fake: Emilia Clarke in Game of Thrones

Daenerys Targaryen’s pregnancy on Game of Thrones ended the way nearly all happy events do on the fantasy series-- badly.

During season 1, Dany becomes pregnant with the son of her new husband Khal Drogo. The baby, among other factors, brings Dany and Drogo closer together. However, by the end of season 1, Dany loses both her husband and her son.

Actress Emilia Clarke didn’t suffer nearly as tragic a fate in real-life because she was never pregnant.

Although Game of Thrones found a way to make Dany’s pregnancy look realistic, the actress was never expecting.

4 Real: Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy

Lucille Ball really started it all. I Love Lucy was groundbreaking because it was the first TV show to have a pregnancy storyline with a woman who was actually pregnant.

When Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz, who played the married couple Ricky and Lucy on the show, became pregnant with their first child, they decided to write it into the narrative.

There was a problem, though, as the censors were very strict at the time. Lucy and Ricky couldn’t even sleep in the same bed.

While Lucy was “allowed” to be visibly pregnant, the word “pregnant” could never be said and there certainly couldn’t be any signs of labor when the baby (Ricky Jr.) was eventually born.

3 Fake: Gina Rodriquez in the Jane the Virgin

This isn’t all that surprising. The initial concept of Jane the Virgin revolved around Jane being a pregnant after being artificially inseminated by accident in the very first episode.

The show wasn’t really going to find a woman who was pregnant to play Jane.

So even though Jane the Virgin followed a relatively realistic pregnancy timeline for Jane, where she becomes pregnant in the first episode and gives birth by the season 1 finale, everything else was fake.

However, this really worked towards the benefit of Jane the Virgin, as the show often employed flashbacks of a non-pregnant Jane.

2 Real: Jennifer Garner in Alias

Alias probably would’ve been better keeping this pregnancy out of the show. The spy drama didn’t exactly improve when Jennifer Garner’s character, Sydney Bristow, became a mother as well as a spy.

However, during Alias season 5, Jennifer Garner was pregnant with her first daughter, Violet Affleck, with then-husband Ben Affleck.

Rather than work around Garner’s pregnancy, her character became pregnant with a daughter too.

Sydney believed that her daughter’s father, Michael Vaughn, was deceased for most of her pregnancy. In true spy fashion, he had faked his passing.

It’s safe to say that the same situation wasn’t the case for Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck.

1 Fake: Sarah Wayne Callies in The Walking Dead

There are few characters more rightfully hated on The Walking Dead than Lori Grimes. Lori, through no fault of actress Sarah Wayne Callies, was an excruciating walking talking pile of contradictions.

Some of Lori’s worst moments, though, happpened when she was visibly pregnant during season 3.

Lori was never a useful character, but she became a total burden in season 3 when everyone (reasonably) bent over backwards to save her and her baby. However, this didn’t happen because the actress was pregnant.

Lori’s pregnancy, including the uncertainty about who the father was, was lifted straight out of the comic books. However, Lori’s end during childbirth differed quite a lot from the source material.

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Can you think of any other real or fake TV pregnancies? Sound off in the comments!

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