I’ll be right back, Hollywood…I’m gonna go have a baby.
I always knew I wanted to have children. And that I wanted to be a mom. And when I met my husband at the age of 25, I knew that I wanted to have his children and to parent beside him. But having just moved to New York City to (project from your diaphragm) BE AN ACTRESS! — I wasn’t ready to dive into parenting just yet. I had my whole career ahead of me.
The plan was to be super successful and on a big TV show and have a one-bedroom apartment with some garden space and enough money to afford a weekend Zipcar and after all that… kid(s).
By the time I was 30, I was engaged to my now-husband, performing several nights at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater (a dream come true), teaching improv comedy classes, slinging wine and wings at two different restaurants and occasionally booking a commercial for Bagelfuls or Outback Steakhouse. Ooh la la! My fiancé was quickly rising as an administrator at one of Brooklyn’s toughest high schools. Our lives were chaotic and full and exciting and we hardly ever saw one another. But somehow, the Tuesday night take-out, the Saturdays and the four hours we overlapped in the same bed each night kept us stitched together. The plan was to get married and then keep on barreling full-throttle towards our dreams (of comedy domination and an equal education for all children), and after we finished that… kid(s) of our own.
A few years later, now a married woman, I found myself sitting on a borrowed queen bed iChatting with my husband (him in Brooklyn, me in Los Angeles). I had been spending more and more time on the west coast for work and he was firmly planted in Brooklyn, having just started a high school from scratch. We were both right in the thick of it, career-wise. All the groundwork we’d laid for the past eight years was paying off. But after two years of flying LA to Brooklyn every third weekend, I was tired of the back and forth of it all. I missed my husband. (I really love him. I’m a better human around him.) And thus, we made the big decision to leave Brooklyn and move to Los Angeles.
Two weeks later, I got a call that my script in development had been passed on (aka “thank you, but no thank you.”) The next morning, another call came in that my TV show had been cancelled. Best twenty-four hours ever? All my irons in the fire and the fire had gone out. So here I was, uprooting my husband from his family and career and moving him cross-country for some auditions and only the potential of work. He had already gotten a new job in Los Angeles as the principal of a phenomenal all-girl school largely serving pregnant and parenting teens (New Village Girls Academy). We had already given notice on our apartment, so it was happening whether or not I had a job.
Okay… new plan… start over in LA, build a career, find a home, baby soon?
On our drive westward, I got a call that NBC had offered us a script deal.
New plan! Make a TV show! Baby later!
My writing partner and I moved from script to table read to filming with the full desperation that producing your first TV show brings. Since it was our first project, we gave the show all of our time, energy and love. It was all consuming. We were writing, producing, acting, casting, costuming, location-scouting, doing our own stunts (!) and there was no time for anything else. We actually referred to the show as our baby, and that’s what it seemed to feel like. We poured our heart and soul into it. We even bled for it, literally. (Both of us ended up in the urgent care/ER at one point during the production.)
It seemed this would be my new way of life:
Work first, everything else after.
I began to plan my family’s future around the show. I would be a few months pregnant by the time season one wrapped, pop out the baby during our hiatus, and then jump back into action just in time for season two. Cause that’s how babies happen, right? Exactly at the time that you want them? And Hollywood always does what it says it’s gonna do, right?
One afternoon, as we sat editing our final episode, our producer walked in with the sadness of the world on his face. We knew it was over. Our show was being pulled from air. We were devastated. We believed somehow that because we’d given everything to the show, worked crazy hours, disappeared from the lives of our friends and families, literally bled for it, that all of that would translate to success.
I was sad. But I was also angry. And I was also very clear about one thing:
No more waiting for the right time to start a family. A baby would be happening. And everyone around me could just deal with it.
New plan: Get pregnant and figure the rest out later.
For a non-pregnant actress, the idea of having a baby is terrifying. I was sure no one would want to cast me in any projects because of my big ol’ belly. I was sure I would never work again since I’d have to take a couple months off. I was sure my creative juices would be zapped and that I’d never be funny again. But instead, because I was so confident that I would be rejected, I approached each audition with a sense of ease and freedom. While pregnant, I filmed Arrested Development, Mad Men, and the pilot episode for Playing House. (I was eight months pregnant playing a woman who was eight months pregnant!) After my daughter was born, I found myself leaving auditions and not second-guessing for the first time in my life. I had a newborn at home and better things to worry about. I also discovered that while I was working, I had a real sense of clarity. We started the writer’s room for Playing House when my daughter was 10 weeks old, and although I don’t remember much of those four months of writing, my colleagues assured me I was more focused and funnier than ever.
Newest (and current) plan: My daughter is almost two and a half now.
I’m gonna keep trying to be an awesome mom to her and a kick-ass wife to my husband. And then… after all that… work.
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