Hallmark Stars You Didn't Know Were Pregnant While Filming

Of the many celebs you didn't know were pregnant while filming, Hallmark stars seem to have made it a habit of hiding their baby bumps on screen. Just like there are plenty of Hallmark Channel stars who are married in real life, there is also a long list of actors who've been pregnant while their characters haven't been. Rather than recasting or overhauling scripts, the network has found a surefire formula to keep growing bellies a secret using simple techniques, like strategically placed props and close-up camera angles. While the shoots aren't always perfect, and some fans have spotted glimpses of unexpected baby bumps, these efforts have been mostly successful.

That being said, shooting while expecting can often take a physical toll on the actors themselves. Here's your look at the Hallmark stars you didn't know were pregnant while filming, as well as how they succeeded in keeping their babies a secret, while dealing with everything from morning sickness to swelling feet that refused to fit into screen-ready heels.

Lacey Chabert has made a fortune from Hallmark, and a large part of her success has been her dedication to the network. Indeed, even late-stage pregnancy couldn't stop her filming 2016's "A Wish for Christmas." Chabert was in her third trimester when she shot the film, and as she cheekily told fans on Instagram, it took some creative prop placement to get the job done. "When you're 6 1/2 months pregnant but your character isn't, you carry lots of bags," she wrote.

A bulky winter wardrobe also helped, as did prioritizing close-up shots, but as Chabert revealed in a guest blog for People, the real challenge was getting past her own physical limitations. "Pregnancy is exhausting!" she wrote in part, per Yahoo!. Pregnancy insomnia made her 3:30 a.m. wake-up calls all the tougher, while staying in character despite her daughter's intensifying movements took major will power. Pushing swollen feet into heels was another unexpected curveball, although the crew found an inventive workaround by building Chabert a platform to stand on. She shared, "I could take off my shoes when not in the shot and yet still be tall enough."

Chabert gave birth to her first child that September, a daughter named Julia Mimi Bella Nehdar. Not long after, Julia got to (sort of) take part in yet another Hallmark film as Chabert returned to work on 2017's "Moonlight in Vermont." "Julia was on set with me, and it was my first experience working away on location as a family," the actor told PC Principle. "We created some wonderful memories."

Fans of 2019's "Paris, Wine, and Romance" may not have realized that Jen Lilley filmed the Hallmark flick while pregnant. The first half of the four-week shoot proved easy, but as she told IBT, "Two weeks in, my bump popped." Luckily, she was still early in her pregnancy, and a few strategically placed props were enough to hide her belly. What's more, her small bump only showed from the side, which allowed for a simple fix. "We were mainly shooting me straight on," Lilley explained. The real challenge came when it was time to look at a menu. "Finding things in Bulgaria that I could eat was a little difficult," she admitted, especially because she was drawn to — and forced to refrain from — "delicious cheeses and all these things that you just can't [have] because you don't know if they're pasteurized or not."

However, the experience clearly didn't put her off, because Lilley also filmed "Love Unleashed" that year. Speaking with IBT, she noted, "That one was only challenging because it was cold." Otherwise, she said the shoot was easier than the first, as she had worked with the crew and director multiple times before. "They all knew I was pregnant and they were all excited," she recalled.

Staying on brand, Lilley nearly gave birth at a Hallmark event, telling Access Hollywood she had begun experiencing contractions just as she arrived at Hallmark Summer TCA that July. Ultimately, she welcomed daughter Julie Evangeline Wayne four days later.

Emilie Ullerup is a Hallmark staple, and so is her family. You've probably seen Ullerup's real-life husband on "Chesapeake Shores," and her first child, son Wilde Mørkøv Ullerup Cassie, appeared in 2020's "Nature of Love" before he was born. Ullerup was four months pregnant during the shoot, and it proved difficult to hide her visible bump. She would often hold objects in front of her belly, but as she admitted, that wasn't enough. "I had to have a body double for any wide shots as I was showing," the actor told Parade. However, even that wasn't a foolproof plan. "You could make a drinking game out of the movie," Ullerup quipped. "Any time you spot the bump, you drink."

Another hurdle was the script itself. The characters were meant to be active and spend most of their time outdoors, which wasn't easy. "In the first draft of the script, they had me rock climbing and all these crazy things," she told Media Village. Although they ended up tweaking some parts of the story, her body double still had to do a lot of the heavy lifting. "Every wide shot you see in the movie is not me," Ullerup revealed. "And all of the adventure stuff, also not me." What's more, even the parts she did shoot proved tough, as she shared, "I was ... not feeling super-duper."

Even so, Ullerup was up to the challenge again in 2022 when she filmed the final season of "Chesapeake Shores." At the time, the Hallmark star was expecting her second child, Coco Mørkøv Ullerup Cassie.

"Chesapeake Shores" made Meghan Ory a Hallmark staple, but when the show was due to come to an end in 2022, she had to deal with more than just sadness. While shooting the series' sixth and final season, Ory was pregnant — just like her co-star, Emilie Ullerup. And just like her fellow actor, she struggled to balance the physical toll of pregnancy with her duties as an actor. 

Taking to Instagram in 2022, Ory revealed to fans that she was expecting her third child and had to shoot while dealing with a condition called hyperemesis gravidarum. As Cleveland Clinic explains, this entails "severe nausea and vomiting" and can lead to dizziness, dehydration, and weight loss. In a similar Instagram post shared that May, Ory wrote she was, "#onset #acting like I'm not going to barf."

However, it wasn't the first time Ory had to balance her personal and professional lives. In 2019, Ory was already mom to a two-year-old and expecting her second child while working on the series. Luckily, she got to bring her young son to set, and it went splendidly well. "I can tell you that the girls who play my television daughters are in love with my little boy," she enthused to Parade. However, as Ory cheekily told the outlet, life was beginning to imitate art a bit too much. "My mom life is probably looking a little bit more like Abby in her 'Chesapeake Shores' time rather than in her New York days," she quipped.

Devoted Hearties will know that Andrea Brooks is no stranger to hiding a growing baby bump on "When Calls the Heart." The actor first did so in Season 7, then again in Season 10, and as she told TV Goodness in 2023, she was lucky the show's costume designer had some serious forethought. She "kept all of my blouses and maternity stuff ... which was amazing," Brooks applauded, noting it made filming with a bump much easier the second time around. That being said, it didn't make it more comfortable. "It got toasty under some of the outfits," Brooks shared, recalling how she would tell the team, "Give me just the lightest blouse, and even if it's November ... I'll stand out in the wind."

Brooks similarly praised the show's costume designer during an interview with Entertainment Tonight, in which she also gave credit to the props department and the camera team for filming at strategic angles that kept her very noticeable belly out of sight. "I do end up being nine months pregnant by the end," she told TV Fanatic, admitting, "So, I do carry a lot of very strange props."

Jump to 2024, and the star was once again working while pregnant, filming Season 12. "We may or may not have resorted to safety pinning my costumes together at the very end," she shared on Instagram. That's because, once again, she filmed well into her ninth month, giving birth just 11 days after the season wrapped.

Erin Krakow and Ben Rosenbaum's relationship slowly transitioned from longtime co-stars to real-life sweethearts as they adopted a pup together in January 2023, then tied the knot in 2025. Since then, the "When Calls the Heart" stars have made the show even more of a family affair. In November of that year, the couple revealed on Instagram that they were expecting their first child together, although Krakow had initially decided to keep the exciting news under wraps. As filming of the show's 13th season got underway, the actor didn't tell the cast and crew she was expecting, but she nearly gave herself away with her dietary requests. "I just wanted pickles on everything," Krakow told Scary Mommy. Turns out, that was a telltale sign. "Crafty was starting to wonder, I heard, after the fact," she shared.

Once everyone knew on set, they made it their mission to keep Krakow's growing bump hidden, even resorting to some sneaky special effects work. Posing in front of a green screen, Krakow told fans on Instagram, "When you're too [pregnant] to [fly] up to your [Canadian] castmates, @hallmarkchannel makes a little [magic]!"

Equally magical was working with two fellow soon-to-be parents, Kevin McGarry and Chris McNally. "It was such a surprise to learn that we were all pregnant at the same time and due within six weeks of each other!" Krakow told Scary Mommy of her co-stars' wives, adding that she loved being able to learn about parenting together. Soon after filming wrapped, Krakow and Rosenbaum welcomed their daughter in April 2026.

Alexa and Carlos PenaVega's marriage appears to be unshakeable, as does their relationship with Hallmark. It was therefore only fitting that even a pregnancy wouldn't derail their commitment to filming content for the network. Indeed, Alexa completed "Taking a Shot at Love" at the end of 2020 while expecting her third child, Rio Rey PenaVega, who was born in May 2021. Revealing the news online only after the film's release, she tweeted, "I am totally pregnant while filming this movie and nobody knew."

However, it wasn't the first time she'd had to keep her bump a secret. "I've had to do it twice," she told "The Unplanned Podcast" in 2024, before admitting, "It's such a pain in the booty because you're always in, like, big coats or giant purses or holding, like, random things in front of you." 

Even so, Alexa did explain she felt lucky to carry most of her baby weight in her belly, which made concealment easier via strategic camera angles. "They do a good job of hiding it," she said of the crew, adding that the short three- or four-week turnaround on Hallmark movie shoots makes it even easier. "Within a month, it's usually pretty doable," she mused of keeping a growing bump under wraps. Instead, Alexa admitted on Instagram Stories, per Bustle, that dealing with morning sickness was actually "the hardest part."

Hallmark works hard to hide its stars' unexpected baby bumps, but it's not always successful. In April 2020, Jill Wagner and husband David Lemanowicz welcomed their first child, a daughter named Army Gray Lemanowicz. The happy news came just one month after the release of Wagner's latest Hallmark flick, "Mystery 101: An Education in Murder." Although the star herself hasn't spoken about working while pregnant, given the network's notoriously short shooting schedules and quick production times, Wagner was almost certainly well into her pregnancy during the shoot. 

Indeed, as one eagle-eyed reviewer wrote on Letterboxd, "It's so obvious Jill is pregnant here." Although they applauded all the effort made to hide her bump through smart camera and wardrobe choices, they noted, "In some [shots] you do clearly see her bump though, if you pay attention to how the fabric of her blouse moves."

Turns out the pregnancy also nearly impacted another big project of Wagner's. Speaking with Numéro Netherlands, the actor revealed she had been cast in the Paramount+ thriller "Lioness" while pregnant with Army. She began training for the shoot soon after giving birth, but she soon became pregnant again. Luckily, when she told showrunner Taylor Sheridan he'd have to recast, he disagreed, noting that they'd have to wait for star Zoe Saldaña anyway due to her own busy schedule. "He gave me time to have my second child and a few months to get back in shape, for the second time," Wagner, who gave birth to daughter Daisy Roberta Lemanowicz in August 2021, told the outlet.