Claire Danes talks about the complex feelings surrounding her pregnancy at 44
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Claire Danes talks about the complex feelings surrounding her pregnancy at 44

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Claire Danes shares the “curious shame” she felt after her most recent pregnancy.

The “Homeland” actress, who has three children with her husband Hugh Dancy, opened up about her “third oopsie-daisy baby” during an appearance on the “Smartless” podcast on Monday.

“I was very old when that happened. I was 44 years old,” Danes told hosts Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes.

“I didn’t think it was possible; I really didn’t think about it,” he said, laughing. “I was terrified, but everything was fine.”

When Arnett asked Danes what it was like to find out she was pregnant at that stage in life, she responded that “it was actually very interesting.”

“Because I didn’t foresee it at all. And it was strange. I suddenly felt a strange shame,” the actor said. “I was naughty. I had been caught fornicating beyond what I should have.”

Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy attend Netflix
Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy attend the premiere of Netflix’s “The Beast in Me” on November 5 in New York City.

Cindy Ord via Getty Images

The experience of becoming pregnant later in life was both “strange” and “wild” because, for the Danes, it was like “going a little outside the parameters.”

Danes and Dancy also share two other children, both boys: Cyrus, who will turn 13 in December, and Rowan, 7.

“It’s a journey. I mean, I have a teenager and a little boy,” Danes said, adding that she was “very, very lucky” that her last little one was a girl.

“My OB-GYN told me, ‘You know, you’re going to have another boy.’ But it turns out you’re not,” she said, despite adding that she still “would have been thrilled” to have a third child.

Danes has always been very open about pregnancy and motherhood, and has previously called being a mother “incredibly challenging.”

“But we still feel the pressure to talk about it in very romantic terms,” ​​she said in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK in 2014. “We all have that resentment sometimes and anxiety about being trapped in the role, that responsibility. And then, chemically, it can spiral out of control and there’s no off button.”

She described that part of parenting as “the most difficult adjustment” for her.

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“You always feel indebted to someone. And while they’re like koala bears, you just feel a physical responsibility to be there for them to hold on to,” Danes said, adding that it’s all “pretty primal.”

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