Ellie Kemper’s pregnancy story shows why all women need a boss like Tina Fey
Constance Grady is a senior correspondent on the Culture team for Vox, where since 2016 she has covered books, publishing, gender, celebrity analysis, and theater.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt star Ellie Kemper announced on The Tonight Show Wednesday night that she’s expecting a baby.
Not to worry, Kimmy Schmidt fans. It didn’t affect shooting the season at all — except for one scene where Kimmy rides a roller coaster.
“I felt like a pregnant lady on a roller coaster was not ideal,” Kemper tells Fallon. But when it came time to film the scene, she was still in the early stages of her pregnancy and hadn’t told anyone about it yet. So she confided in Kimmy Schmidt showrunner Tina Fey.
“I told her before I told my mom,” Kemper admits. “You can trust her, and you cannot trust my mom.” (She took back that slander against her mother immediately, for Ellie Kemper, being of rainbows and sunshine, would never insult her mother on national television.)
Fey came up with a plan: They’d tell everyone that Kemper had a back injury, and that would explain why she couldn’t ride the roller coaster without forcing her to reveal her pregnancy before she was ready.
Unfortunately, that plan didn’t account for Kemper’s natural exuberance. “They’d yell, ‘Lunch,’ I’d leap up and cartwheel to catering,” she recalls. “At the wrap party I completely forgot and I was dancing.” And she didn’t have a good excuse ready when her friends asked about her back: “The doctor said dancing could be good,” she offered, “but I don’t know.”
Congrats to Kemper, whose kid will undoubtedly be almost as cute as she is.
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