To avoid discrimination in Hollywood, I had a secret baby. It didn’t work. Here’s what did…
2020 was going to be my year. I spent January traveling in Vietnam with some of my closest friends. I spent February writing a movie adaptation for a major mobile gaming company. I spent March at Netflix working on their inaugural “Netflix is a Joke” comedy festival. And then something happened…. I got pregnant. Also a pandemic. A pandemic happened.
And the pandemic provided me with a luxury withheld from generations of women writers. I could keep my pregnancy a secret. I could hide my growing belly as easily as tilting up my Zoom screen. I could blame my weight gain on pandemic boredom or stress. My career would not be ruined by this pregnancy because no one would know it even existed.
My husband, also a writer, didn’t get it. He received only heartfelt congratulations when he mentioned the impending child. My friends, especially older mothers who worked in the industry definitely did get it. They nodded in sympathy when I mentioned that my agent had warily asked me if I planned on getting pregnant. They mentioned lost jobs due to growing bellies and dubious childcare. They told stories of the silence that came after the congratulations, the phone calls and emails that dried up when people assumed they were too busy or distracted to (maybe ever) work again. And I was determined not to let that happen to me. My pregnancy would be like an Angeleno’s age — a closely guarded secret.
Honestly, part of me thought it would be a funny joke. I’d show up to a party nine months pregnant and everyone would laugh and laugh. What a charming anecdote! Instead, I pitched that movie I was hired to write five days postpartum, wearing an adult diaper, delirious from sleep deprivation. I think I did a great job, but they still passed, maybe because it was the midst of the pandemic, or maybe because the executive was a little bit hungry. Who knows. This industry is bonkers.
And, as my secret baby turned into a secret toddler, my agent dropped me. The Netflix festival was canceled. The movie went nowhere. The company that hired me went under. I had run the long con and still I found myself making less money than I ever had. Was it because our industry was in shambles or was it because I was a mother and despite my best efforts, everyone could smell the stink of breast milk and baby vomit on me?
All the while, I had this weird secret hanging over me. I had a child that only a handful of people knew about. People would pull me in to whisper that they were pregnant and I would respond with “I have a seventeen month old.” I was trapped in a lie of my own making (a lie of omission but still a lie). What had suddenly seemed like the perfect way to not ruin my career made me now feel insane. I had to find a way out. I ripped off the bandaid and announced it via social media. I honestly wish people said congratulations and then stopped calling. But in reality, they weren’t calling before. The industry have been pretty rocked for the past few years, and the combination of pandemic and baby turned me into a hermit.
A few months later, I got pregnant again. But this time, we weren’t in a pandemic. We were in that post pandemic bliss where we all just gave up on masks and safety protocols and accepted getting Covid for some reason. And because of this, I couldn’t really hide my pregnancy. So instead I embraced it.
Six months pregnant, I co-wrote, directed, and produced a short with my amazing collaborator and fellow mom, Annie Girard. Working with her had been the blessing of the pandemic — we collaborated on scripts over Zoom, shared war stories from the front lines of parenting, and created our short “1 in the Chamber” based on our own experiences of sexism in the industry.
You see, Annie had waddled into the final stages of a writing fellowship nine months pregnant, all while being told at every step the many ways she couldn’t do it. She was rejected. Instead she filmed a TV series three weeks postpartum. She was (and is) a badass.
So at six months pregnant, in the midst of the WGA and SAG strike, we filmed our short (I would like to point out that it was a SAG production and the SAG short agreement was never struck — we were above board, baby, union strong). This time, I wasn’t hiding my pregnancy, I was using it. I was parenting out loud. I was making a short inspired by my (and Annie’s) own personal experiences with sexism and discrimination, especially how they relate to childbirth and motherhood. And we had action and jokes and even a stunt! Plus I already had the nursery to film in, so we basically had everything we needed to film… (dear reader, we did not…)
This time, I surrounded myself with people who have also navigated the industry as parents. Our amazingly talented DP Meena Singh always met with us before picking up her kids from daycare. One of our stars, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, coordinated with her nanny to be in our short.
And it wasn’t just parents who rallied around our project. The night before our production, I couldn’t walk due to pregnancy sciatica. Our phenomenal producers, James Bristow and Rachel Parsons, sent me to bed and finished building a fake wall in my kitchen that stunt actors would break through two days later. Their support didn’t make me weaker, it made me stronger. By seeking out and asking for help, we realized just how many talented people wanted to lend those said talents to our vision. It was absolutely astonishing.
It truly takes a village to create a video village.
Embracing my pregnancy and being willing to loudly and proudly co-write, direct, and produce a short while sporting a baby bump felt far better than sneaking around and treating my pregnancy like a dirty secret. Because giving birth deepened my ability as a storyteller. It made me more fully understand love and joy and — in a way — creation. It made me both more exhausted and more fulfilled than I ever felt possible. And aren’t those some of the very emotions we strive to conjure up in our audience when making a film?
Did directing this short while pregnant magically make sexism go away? No. But in a society where Nobel Prize winning economist Claudia Goldin proved that the gender pay gap becomes its widest after birth, it felt like an act of defiance, of protest, and of empowerment.
And I felt like I’ve been rewarded. I have a short film that I’m insanely proud of. I have a growing partnership with my co-everything Annie Girard. The short (and the partnership) has already been celebrated and embraced. We’ve been accepted into 5 festivals so far — Etheria, LA Shorts, the Valley Film Festival, HollyShorts, and the Broad Humor Festival. And we couldn’t be prouder to introduce our latest baby to the world. She’s 7 minutes and 17 seconds long and kicks major ass.
To find out more about the film, head to https://linktr.ee/1inthechamberfilm.
