by Paulette Cohn
What makes The Pregnancy Project such compelling TV is the fact that it is based on the real-life story of a 17-year-old high school student who took a stand on something she felt was important: Life doesn’t have to end for teen girls who become pregnant.
“What we want to get out there with this film is that being a teen mom is a really difficult path to be on but if it is something you have gotten yourself into, it is not the end of the road for you,” says Alexa Vega, who is pictured here with the real-life Gaby Rodriguez. “You can still accomplish your goals. You are just going to have to work harder than everybody else.”
The story begins when Gaby decides that her senior project will be on stereotyping, which she decides to experience firsthand by pretending to be pregnant. Only her mother Juana (Judy Reyes), her boyfriend Jorge (Walter Perez), her principal and a few close friends and teachers knew the truth.
While her fake baby bump continues to grow over the next six-and-a-half months, Gaby carefully records how she is treated and what is being said about her — for better and for worse — both in and out of school.
When the school holds an assembly for Gaby to reveal her pregnancy was fake, she not only got the message out to her fellow high school students, but the story was picked up by the media. And now, it has become a Lifetime Television movie, as well as a book.
In this interview, the “Spy Kids” star addresses the reasons why the film was made, why it is an important message and how it made her think about when she wants to have kids.
Did you know the story before getting the script?
I didn’t realize this was a true story. My mom had heard it all over the news when it happened, so I started researching who Gaby Rodriguez was and what her story was. I got a little bit of an idea from watching her in interviews. It is truly amazing what she has gone through. She is such a bright, smart, articulate young woman and for her to come up with this well-thought-out plan at just 17 years old — and to convince her mother and go through something as stressful and emotional as this [is remarkable]. And to convince your principal and your teachers, you have to have a really strong message that you want to send and I think she sent it.
How did you prepare for the role? Did you go to any parenting classes?
I am the oldest of six kids. My mom was a young mother, so I spent a lot of time with mommy duties. I also spent a lot of time talking really directly with our director and producers to make sure I portrayed this exactly as they wanted it because we are telling somebody else’s story here.
I was able to talk to Gaby and during the filming of the actual assembly when she tells them she is not pregnant to me that was the biggest day and Gaby was there with me all day long. I asked her, “Right before you went in exactly what were you thinking,” and “Was your heart racing?” I was able to get all these inside tips that helped me dive into it a little bit further and was so helpful.
During the process of this, you had to wear the baby bump. Did that make it feel real to you? How did it change your outlook on becoming a mother?
I feel that no matter how much you try to prepare yourself, you are entering a world you can’t really know until you experience it. Just wearing that belly and walking around, I started wobbling and touching it a lot. Strange kind of mommy instincts kicked in. It was so weird, but it really put me into the reality of the situation. Even though I am happily married, we want to wait a little longer and still do growing of our own before we have children.
Everything we do changes us. How did this experience change you?
Coming into it — and we all do it — even if we say we don’t — we all have a tendency to judge people. Even with all the teen mom shows out there, nothing is really showing the reality of the situation. They are kind of glorifying it and cheapening what being a teen mom really is. The reason that Gaby did this experiment is she wanted to prove that not everybody has to be a statistic. Just because you are in this situation doesn’t mean you have to drop out of high school or you won’t be able to get a good job. You just have to work harder. Also, it just doesn’t affect you. It affects your family and your friends. You have to know that there is going to be a lot of responsibility that comes with being a mother at such a young age.
Having met Gaby, can you give us an update on how her life is now?
Gaby is doing great. She is going to college, studying like crazy. It has been a whirlwind experience for both her and Jorge because they have been promoting her book and flying all over the place while lugging her heavy psychology books. She has been studying in between interviews. She is a young, very determined girl. When you speak to her, you are really flabbergasted that she is only 18 years old.
What do you admire most about her?
She wasn’t afraid to go for something that she believed in. I can’t imagine living that kind of life day in and day out for six and a half months and being able to keep that secret when things got really frustrating, or when that emotional roller coaster really started to take its toll on her. That would have been the time she could have said, “Why am I doing this? It is fake. I don’t need to put myself through this.” But she saw that it was a bigger issue than just her. She put her self-interest aside and said, “I am doing this to show young girls that this is possible. I am doing this to show my family that life wouldn’t be over.” She really jumped into that world. She went to pregnancy classes with Jorge. She did all of the things that a young pregnant girl would do. She handled herself very well. In order to convince her principal and others, she came up with this very large essay of why she wanted to do this and why she felt it was important in this day and age. When that was presented, the principal and the few teachers who knew about the situation felt as though, “It doesn’t make sense to not let her do this social experiment because it was so well thought out.”
The Pregnancy Project premieres on Lifetime Television on Saturday, January 28 at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Want to explore more? Check out Paulette’s blog, The Hollywood Know!
Posted in TV News
By Paulette Cohn
Comments: 0 »
