The TV Column

The Big Bang's Bernadette in bed as a precaution

Howard and Bernadette (Simon Helberg, Melissa Rauch) learn to deal with Bernadette’s bed rest and the pending arrival of Baby No. 2 this season on The Big Bang Theory.
Howard and Bernadette (Simon Helberg, Melissa Rauch) learn to deal with Bernadette’s bed rest and the pending arrival of Baby No. 2 this season on The Big Bang Theory.

Hardly a day passes that I don't get a few emails asking about something going on out there in TV land. They're usually about programming -- what happened to a favorite show or will another show be renewed?

Every now and then I'll get one that asks about something that I've been wondering about as well, and that's a good excuse to dig deeper. Here's a recent example from a reader in Stuttgart.

Mr. Storey,

On The Big Bang Theory, do you know why they are doing a storyline with Bernadette pregnant again and on bed rest? They never show the first baby, so why are they bringing another one into the story?

If the actress is really pregnant, they could just hide it with a bag of groceries or have her sit down or hold something in front of her -- not hard to camouflage, so why the bed rest story?

Just thought you would have an insider's info.

-- M.H.,

Stuttgart

Thanks for the question. I didn't have any previous inside scoop, but it didn't take long to dig up the answers.

First of all, Bernadette is played by the delightfully diminutive (4-foot-11) Melissa Rauch, 37, who has, indeed, been pregnant in real life. The good news is that she and her husband, writer Winston Rauch, became the parents of a baby girl on Dec. 4.

Melissa made the announcement on Instagram: "I am beyond over the moon to share that our beautiful baby girl, Sadie Rauch, has arrived and our hearts are bursting at the seams with love for her.

"I will never take for granted the difficult road it took to get here. To those on that road: I'm sending you so much love today and always."

(Trivia: Winston Beigel took his wife's last name when the couple married in 2007.)

About the bed rest. In the Big Bang storyline, Bernadette was told she was pushing herself too hard at her 16-week checkup and was put on bed rest. In reality, that was an attempt to accommodate Rauch, who had suffered a miscarriage in her previous pregnancy and had written about it eloquently in a candid and intimate essay in the July 11, 2017, edition of Glamour magazine.

"The miscarriage I experienced was one of the most profound sorrows I have ever felt in my life," she wrote. "I kept waiting for the sadness to lift, but it didn't."

Rauch went on to describe her feelings of blame and guilt and reminds readers that "due to reasons beyond anyone's control, miscarriage is estimated to occur in anywhere from 15 to 20 percent of recognized pregnancies. There was nothing you could've done to change the situation."

She adds, "Most important, please be kind to yourself."

As my Stuttgart reader points out, we've seen very little of baby Halley by design, so I imagine we'll see little of Baby Wolowitz II once he (it's a boy) is born.

Former executive producer Steve Molaro explained, "Maybe somewhere down the line there might be tiny glimpses, but the plan is for [Halley] to function as [Howard's mother] did -- as a comedic off-screen voice."

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, new series showrunner Steve Holland said when Rauch told them she was pregnant, "Our first thought was that we can do the regular sitcom thing of having her sitting down a lot and putting things in her lap to hide her belly.

"Then we realized that it's really interesting that they wouldn't be expecting again so quickly, and nobody in the audience would be expecting them to do so, either. It seemed like a really interesting story to tell."

Hiding a cast member's pregnancy has been a familiar TV gimmick over the years.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine Benes) became pregnant on the third and eighth seasons of Seinfeld and held a lot of large packages. Sarah Jessica Parker learned she was pregnant in Sex and the City's fifth season and her Carrie Bradshaw started wearing loose Empire-waist dresses.

On Season 4 of How I Met Your Mother, both Alyson Hannigan (Lily) and Cobie Smulders (Robin) were pregnant. The writers made an ongoing joke about Lily as she hid behind an increasingly bizarre collection of objects.

When the fifth season of Mad Men began, January Jones (Betty Draper) was eight months pregnant. Creator Matthew Weiner wrote in a storyline about Betty's sudden weight gain and even had her wear a fat suit.

30 Rock wrote around Tina Fey's and Jane Krakowski's pregnancies during the series, but New Girl shipped Zooey Deschanel (Jess) off to extended jury duty and brought in substitute Megan Fox during Season 5. During her second pregnancy in Season 6, Deschanel relied on camera angles and body doubles.

Rauch's maternity leave fell during the midseason break for the series, so she'll be out for only a few episodes.

A Season 12 has been ordered for The Big Bang Theory, but it's rumored to be the final one. The series, TV's No. 1 comedy, airs at 7 p.m. Thursday on CBS.

The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email:

mstorey@arkansasonline.com

Style on 02/18/2018

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