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Tagged under:2013, Interview
Posted by on 26 September 2013

via USA Today:

Morena Baccarin admits she’s ready for her baby to arrive.

“I’m getting tired and uncomfortable,” she says in an interview ahead of Sunday’s third-season premiere for Showtime’s Homeland.

And don’t ask about whether she and her hubby, director Austin Chick, are having a boy or a girl. “We know, but we’re keeping it a secret,” says Baccarin, with a sly smile.

The actress, who joked with USA TODAY’s Andrea Mandell about having “cankles” by the time Sunday’s Emmys were over, says having to film Homeland while pregnant wasn’t exactly what she had planned.

Because her character, Jessica Brody, is married to Nicholas Brody, who was last seen leaving the country in the wake of a CIA bombing, she was initially told by writers that she shouldn’t expect much screen time.

Executive producer Alex Gansa “flat out told me, ‘I don’t think you’re going to be around much this season. We’re trying to figure out the story lines with Brody being on the lam.’ I said to my husband, ‘OK! Let’s do it!’ ”

And then, she says, “The day I found out I was pregnant, Alex called me up and said, ‘Let’s have a meeting.’ ”

She was, of course, “thrilled” to be featured more prominently this season. And last year, Claire Danes was pregnant while filming, “so I had a good example,” she says.

“I was worried about telling the producers because I didn’t want to disappoint anybody and I felt like I had a responsibility to my crew, my cast, producers, writers. I didn’t want to make anybody’s job more difficult.”

She didn’t have to stir pots or carry laundry baskets to hide the pregnancy. These days the bump is just edited out digitally.

And, she says, “Everybody was so sweet and so protective and constantly handed me bottles of water. You get really pampered. Then it switches when you have an infant or toddler and they’re like, ‘Get this kid away from me!’ ”

She says she was never sick on the set. And as for cravings? “I was your typical pregnant lady — pickles and watermelon.”

One thing she’s contemplating now is a return to the short hair she sported during the short-lived but popular ABC sci-fi series V. “I love it short, actually. It’s so easy and wonderful. I’m tempted to chop it all off but for this character it was not appropriate, but at some point I probably will again.”

It’s a constant topic of conversation, she says. “It’s hilarious to me how fixated people are on hair. I had so many comments on why it’s short or long.”

But she loved playing alien Anna on V. “I loved the character and all the outrageous things I got to do on the show. Coming from V into Homeland was a really big change, and the best gift as an actor you can get — which is to transform so drastically from one genre to the next, from lizard to human being!”

While we saw some spicy sex scenes in the past (she was topless in bed with Damian Lewis in Season 1), she says not to expect much of that this season. She has no scenes with Lewis at all. And as for Mike? “He’s not in the picture as much as he should be, I think.” (Diego Klattenhoff, who plays Mike, is a regular on The Blacklist, the new James Spader series.) She adds, “He’s still around and lending support,” but this season is “a whole family thing.”

She has signed for seven seasons of the show and if her character continues, she’s not worried about her own family thing — juggling motherhood and work. “I’m kind of a workaholic. Motherhood may change me but I think it may feed my desire to get out there. I like the idea of raising a kid in my trailer. My mother was an actress. I grew up in theater with her in Brazil. I would play with set dolls. And I loved it. She went to work at night and came back late and we had the days together. I think if you’re happy, you will create the best home for your child. This may all change when it’s reality. But I look forward to having a family feed my work.”