What Show Has the Line Please Tell Me You Arent Pregnant Again?

Interview

Anna Chlumsky on the 'Grown-Upwards' Arroyo to TV Pregnancy in 'Inventing Anna'

"Sometimes it can feel like life is sort of taking the reins and you're but along for the ride."

Past Anne Cohen February 17, 2022

Inventing Anna protagonist Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumsky) is already on a deadline when she takes on the story of a lifetime. Months into her first pregnancy, she's nervously counting down the weeks until her due date, which looms similar a final flow in a chapter of her life. And with her professional reputation in tatters after a career-derailing incident, Vivian doesn't quite feel ready to accept the adjacent step.

In ane hit scene in the serial premiere, Vivian and her husband Jack (Anders Holm) are at an ultrasound appointment and find out they're having a girl. While Jack reacts with genuine elation, Vivian starts having a panic attack. "She's real," she sobs when he asks her what's wrong. "I idea I was going to have information technology fixed — my reputation. Before there is a tiny person I am required to go on alive and pay attention to. I want her; I practice. It'southward just… I thought I would have my career saved. I thought information technology would be repaired, breathing, on its anxiety before who I go to be changes."

Information technology'southward in this fraught context that Vivian comes across the sensational story of Anna Delvey (Julia Garner), a 26-yr-old woman challenge to exist a High german heiress, who has been charged with allegedly defrauding Manhattan'southward elite out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Suddenly, Vivian sees a gamble to reclaim the career she feels she was meant to have. She embarks on an investigation that will take her from Rikers Isle to Park Avenue penthouses and fifty-fifty small-town Deutschland, all in an effort to unravel the mystery of Anna'south true identity.

Vivian is loosely based on Jessica Pressler, the real-life announcer who wrote the New York mag article that creator and author Shonda Rhimes used as a blueprint for Inventing Anna. After finding out Pressler was meaning equally she was pursuing the story, Rhimes said she immediately felt that had to exist a major part of the show. "I loved the thought of seeing a working woman very powerfully doing her job while growing a baby, and and so getting the article out just before she gets her infant out," Rhimes tells Netflix. It'south also what drew Chlumsky, herself a mother of two, to the function. The actor, whose breakout functioning in 1991's My Girl helped shape what girlhood looks like on-screen, was eager to have on what she calls Inventing Anna's "grown-upward" approach to pregnancy and motherhood.

Here, Chlumsky explains how she drew from her ain experience to play this grapheme and why Vivian's want to be taken seriously in the workplace isn't that unlike from Anna's — minus the Celine glasses, of course.

Shonda Rhimes has said that one of the details that drew her to the story initially was that Jessica Pressler wrote this story just as she was about to give birth. What do you recollect that adds to the overall story? Motherhood changes everything. For people who become through any huge life change, everything is divers as before and later on. So, for any woman embarking on something very large in her career and on this whole new definition to her role in life, information technology feels like an immense pressure. I speak sort of from my own experience too, because the week after my offset daughter was born was too the same exact week that I was nominated for my beginning award. Sometimes it can feel similar life is sort of taking the reins and you're just along for the ride. It'southward a very human thing. Not everybody'due south a journalist, not everybody'south an thespian, not everybody'southward in the verbal same place, but nosotros can all kind of relate to life running away and us trying to stay on that train.

It's still rare to come across pregnant women on-screen in a narrative that doesn't middle effectually the pregnancy. Was that on your mind as you lot were playing Vivian? It's i of the major things that drew me to this projection in the first place. I thought information technology was such a grown-up, current and overdue fashion to examine all of the facets of a female's life. When you're going through pregnancy, it does take up a lot of room. And it should, considering it doesn't last forever. However, at the same exact time, you still are doing your job. You still have to spend some of your day doing other things. Information technology'south abiding calibration. I was really grateful that Shonda took it on.

Every bit the show progresses, Vivian's colleagues kickoff to see her less every bit a announcer and more as just a pregnant woman, a characterization that she's constantly pushing back confronting. What did you think about the way the testify approaches Vivian'southward impending motherhood? The first pregnancy is dissimilar than subsequent ones. When you speak to somebody who'south been through it already, they're similar, "Relish information technology now; take the time," and y'all're like, "No, merely you have no thought. I'm kicking and screaming because these people aren't going to take me seriously. I don't desire to be the problem."

During my first pregnancy, I kept saying, "I have no thought how I'm going to do this because I've never washed information technology before." When nosotros're embarking on something and so uncertain, nosotros also desire to rely on the things that nosotros already know. I already know that I'chiliad good at my job, that I can show upwards on time and that I can be a team histrion. So, at present I'g going to really be those, because those are the things I know about myself. I don't know anything about all this other stuff.

Vivian'due south desire to reclaim her identity as a announcer before moving on to a new affiliate in her life is something that a lot of women reckon with. What'due south the evidence'southward take on whether women can "have it all"? I think this is one of those shows that is intelligent enough to question its audience on how nosotros define "having it all." From the outside, I remember that we would look at a character similar Vivian and absolutely categorize that every bit having it all. She's got her career, she's got her intelligence, she'south got her sense of agency, she's going to accept a child, she has a lovely married man. She's got a cracking apartment — we had a whole backstory for that, like there must take been a really nice, chivalrous aunt who left her the co-op.

This is the Instagram situation, though. This is social media. Nevertheless somebody's identifying someone else from the outside, that'southward only ane way to categorize. On the inside, there's "Oh yeah, but you take no idea how I can't sleep and I'chiliad horrible to myself when I expect in the mirror and I'm terrified everywhere I go." And so, tin can a person have it all? Sure, only what are we calling "all"? There's no such thing as a free lunch, and you must say adieu to things in order to proceeds new things.

A woman'due south ambition is so often portrayed every bit a source of conflict in her marriage, so on some level I kept expecting a big fight betwixt Vivian and Jack, only it never comes. It's interesting because when you're playing it, you accept that potential big fight in there the whole fourth dimension. Just considering of the fashion Shonda wrote it, a lot of the relationships in the bear witness are nuanced. They are ongoing conversations, to quote my therapist. Information technology'south all earned. It was written equally two humans trying to figure out how to do this moment in their life together.

You fifty-fifty see that with Kacy, Rachel and Neff. It's always this really fine line that we're all walking together, calibrating our balance and our core force as we're on this little tightrope. I honey that the whole fourth dimension you're like, "Yep, this could be a blowout." Or information technology could work. And that's kind of what every single solar day you wake up with somebody else is.

How does Vivian's quest to be taken seriously in her job compare to Anna's desire to be seen as a businesswoman? Do you lot see their stories as complementing each other? I practice retrieve that we all can place with some part of Anna Delvey's experience. It's such folly to just exist like, "It has nothing to do with me." A lot of us would've done dissimilar things — maybe not committed some crimes. Simply I call back Vivian can definitely encounter a connection with what she'southward had to fight for and become, "Wow, you lot too" and "Why don't I have the nerve?" I call back in that location's a little flake of that in all of us: "What corporeality of nerve can I increase without betraying my own values?" That's the dangerous place that Anna Delvey makes yous play in.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Source: https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/inventing-anna-reporter-actress-anna-chlumsky-pregnancy