Claire Danes/ Homeland: Pregnancy, Logistics, and Cry Face
First, a gratuitous compliation video of Claire Danes' spectacular "ugly cry" faces:
I stopped watching Homeland after this season's "big reveal," but I read this article which pretty much caught me up on what's been going on. It's not like I'm going to start watching it again because honestly I feel like the whole show is becoming logistically impractical, but I did want to bring something up that I find fascinating about television production in general.
Okay, follow me on this. Apparently Claire Danes' character is pregnant this season. Claire Danes the real person was pregnant last year (she had her baby in December). In case you're doing math in your head, I think that means that real Claire Danes was pregnant during the shooting of the last season (which you can kind of tell if you pay attention), but they didn't write a pregnancy into the show until this season. That means that she basically had her baby, took maternity leave (if that exists for actresses), got back into shape, then showed up to shoot this season and found out that her character is pregnant. We're assuming that she's going to have to wear some kind of prosthetic pregnancy belly for this role, which essentially means that she was either real pregnant or fake pregnant for two straight years, and that she lost all that weight for nothing. I would be so pissed!
This is where the logistics of Hollywood get really weird and funny for me. Like, they couldn't have done this storyline when she was pregnant in real life? Or, did they get the idea of her being pregnant on the show from her being pregnant and real life? Weird.
I'm sure this has happened other times in movies and TV shows, but this is the first time I can remember where a fictional pregnancy follows a real one so closely. Also, I know her being institutionalized at the beginning of this season wasn't real necessarily, but it does seem like she was either taking lithium or drinking a large amount, so I'm not sure how that is healthy for pregnancy, even a fictional one.
If my math is off, please correct me, or join me in laughing at how amusing this is.