Michelle Monaghan Once Shared How Being Pregnant Affected Her Performance

Actor Michelle Monaghan collaborated with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey for True Detective. What the cast didn’t know at the time, however, was that Monaghan was pregnant. And her pregnancy would have a subtle effect on her performance.

Michelle Monaghan once shared what it was like doing ‘True Detective’ while pregnant

Monaghan portrayed Harrelson’s wife, Maggie, in Nic Pizzolatto’s hit HBO series. Their marriage was often the heart of the series, which showed the evolution of their relationship over the years. But as Monaghan was working with her co-stars, her team was oblivious to the fact that she was pregnant while filming. Monaghan asserted that she wanted to be completely focused on her work, which was why she kept her pregnancy a secret.

“I was at the beginning stages of my pregnancy, and it never really feels real anyway, until you actually start showing and you start to feel the baby kick,” she once told GQ. “Fortunately I didn’t have any morning sickness or anything like that. And I really didn’t want to be distracted from the work at hand, so I didn’t tell anybody. It was really just towards the end of shooting where I was about five months, where I needed to tell a costume designer.”

But she recalled the child inside her making his presence known during an intense moment with Harrelson.

“I remember it was in our final episode, and Woody was screaming [at the character]. And it was the first time I felt my baby kick,” Monaghan said on The Rich Eisen Show. “I felt my pupils dilate, and I never, ever watch playback on anything that I ever do. But I remembered – my pupils dilated, not because he was yelling at me, but I felt my son kick, who I didn’t know was a boy at the time.”

Monaghan would realize how her performance was affected after re-watching the episode. She confided that she later let the cast in on her pregnancy.

Michelle Monaghan’s pregnancy helped sell her character’s aging appearance

True Detective was a show spanning over several decades of the main characters’ lives. Make-up and a change in hairstyles were often used to depict McConaughey’s and Harrelson’s aging appearances on the show. This would serve Monaghan well, as her hair would get a bit grayer as the anthology series progressed. But her fluctuating size also seemed to play a role in selling her character’s maturity. 

The pregnancy not only affected Monaghan’s performance but her body. With Monaghan gaining weight because of her child, she felt it only added to the scenes where Maggie was older.

“The story was told in chronological order, and my character ages about 20 to 25 years, 30 years, and the thing was, my ass kept getting bigger every episode,” she said. “And I kept going back to the costume designer, and I was like, ‘Sorry, I went home for a few weeks, I put on a little weight.’ She’s like, ‘No, it’s great. Don’t even worry about it.’ She thought I was being method. But really, I was growing a baby, I was five months pregnant. And I wasn’t showing, but my butt was.”

Michelle Monaghan felt her co-stars’ humor balanced out the show’s darkness

True Detective was known for exploring pretty dark and disturbing material. Speaking with Elle, Michelle Monaghan asserted that its content would sometimes take its toll. Fortunately, her co-stars were such a joy to work with that it compensated for True Detective‘s darkness.

“It was a long project – it was like six months and believe me it was very very dark at times,” she said. “But at the same time you can’t maintain that and you’re working with the likes of Woody Harrelson, who is about one of the funniest guys you can come across, and Matthew. They take their work very seriously but in general they don’t take life very seriously. They know how to have fun and they have great senses of humor. It was a ball!”

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