On Sunday's Malcolm in the Middle, Lois got a surprise from the stork — the show's hot-tempered matriarch is pregnant with a fifth child! Funnily enough, actress Jane Kaczmarek and hubby Bradley Whitford (The West Wing) just welcomed daughter Mary Louisa in November. So why wasn't Kaczmarek's real-life pregnancy simply written into the show last year?
"The reality of it is Jane was pretty far along [in her pregnancy] when we started the [fourth] season for doing an 'I'm pregnant and playing it out,'" says exec producer Linwood Boomer. "We didn't have quite enough time to really plan out great episodes. Our lead time on the scripts is so far in advance.
"So," he continues, "we figured [we would] let her become pregnant for February sweeps, which is always nice. We took that time to plan how to do it and how to make it fun."
Boomer says Malcolm's scribes relished "the sadistic enjoyment of seeing how much we could torment these characters until it came out funny." Thus, they gave Lois and Hal's already cash-strapped clan another mouth to feed. "One of my favorite lines in [Sunday's] episode is when all the other children are screaming at Lois, 'How could you do this?!' and she screams back at them, 'This is a blessing!' These kids are sharing beds as it is."
For Kaczmarek's part, she was glad to don a fat suit upon returning from "a very luxurious maternity leave," as opposed to fretting over her post-pregnancy pounds. And talk about a cushy job — since Lois is expecting, the actress gets to do most of her scenes sitting down! "I'm probably the laziest actress," she laughs. "Certainly the laziest Linwood has ever worked with. I love to sit and act."
