How do you take a guide that details the nitty-gritty details of pregnancy, the unfathomable changes that a woman's body and mind can go through during those 40ish weeks, and turn it into a feature film?
Well, to begin, you pack the cast with stars, find a top-notch prosthetics team and do not touch that title.
What to Expect When You're Expecting—based on Heidi Murkoff's everything-you-need-to-know book of the same name that since its first publication in 1984 has sold at least 42 million copies—came out 10 years ago.
In the vein of the star-studded He's Just Not That Into You, which was also inspired by a zeitgeist-commanding advice tome, the 2012 rom-com took some of the (at times literally) sticky issues Murkoff's book addresses and added the talents of Jennifer Lopez, Cameron Diaz, Elizabeth Banks, Anna Kendrick, Brooklyn Decker and more to bring the it's-not-you-it's-pregnancy themes to life.
"It sounds random to turn a 'how-to' book into a romantic comedy, but when you think about it, what's more romantic than starting a family together?" Murkoff told Newsday ahead of the film's May 18, 2012, release. "What's funnier, potentially, than pregnancy?"
Even the grosser stuff, she added, "with a little perspective, it is pretty funny."
But while the line-up of movie-mom-to-be talent was top-notch (casting felt like being "a kid in a candy store," Murkoff raved), the author said she especially liked how the film, written by Shauna Cross and Heather Hach and directed by Kirk Jones, treated the dads—who, she noted, were historically portrayed as clueless distant observers of their partner's plights in movies and TV.
Not that such a trope came from nowhere, but Murkoff—a proud "Dadvocate" who never forgot about the expectant fathers in her book—insisted these guys be portrayed as more evolved.
Let's just say, all the actors delivered.
"You definitely want to see this movie if you've had a baby recently," Amir Talai, who played a stroller-pushing member of the "dude group" headed up by Chris Rock's super-dad Vic, told the Los Angeles Times at the film's premiere. "Not because it will teach you anything at all, but because it's fun and you could use a few laughs."
In honor of the 10th anniversary of What to Expect When You're Expecting, here are 10 behind-the-scenes secrets, plus some of the stars' very real takes on what no book—or movie—can prepare you for:
"They're artists," Cameron Diaz told E! News of the film's prosthetics team headed up by special makeup effects designer Matthew Mungle, who oversaw the crafting of all the actresses' baby bumps. "It's a sculpture. Basically they plaster-cast your body to create a mold." Then they sculpt the belly "so that it looks like it's a part of the body that it's going on. Then the measurements are all perfect so that, when it goes on, it fits perfectly. The ones that snap on are perfectly supported, and there different months—you know, the three-month, the seven-month, the nine-month."
The bare bumps, meanwhile, were glued on, Diaz continued, and "they have a skin tone already, but then they paint it and put all the little veins in and everything. It's really wild."
Diaz, who'd welcome daughter Raddix via surrogate in December 2019, shared that there was "a density" to the bump, but "I'm not carrying that weight inside my own body. I'm carrying it externally, so I'm sure it's a completely different sensation."
"I loved feeling it," Matthew Morrison, who played Evan, the reality-competition dance pro who impregnates Diaz's fitness guru Jules, told E! News of getting acquainted with the actress' prosthetic tummy. "And I was kissing it, it felt like it was our baby."
At the same time, Morrison—who helped his midwife father deliver two babies when he was a senior in high school—also said at the film's Beverly Hills press junket, "I know Cameron had some problems with depth perception. Like she was just bumping into stuff, where she saw a little space and was like 'Oh yeah, I can fit through there.' But she kinda didn't fit through there."
In fact, the future father of two added, "I almost got a black eye, [when] she hit me once with the belly."
Heidi Murkoff, author of the perennial best-seller of the same name that inspired the film, was enlisted to advise on the proper size for the variety of fake bellies and chests worn to make the pregnancies look authentic.
"When I met Cameron for the first time, she opened up her robe and she flashed me her prosthetic breasts and belly that she had just been fitted for," Murkoff told the LA Times at the movie's premiere. "She was very, very proud of them."
When Jennifer Lopez first heard that this movie was being made, she assumed it was going to be more of a clinical guide to each stage of pregnancy—you know, like the book. And she knew from experience that you can only be so prepared.
"You just don't know what to expect," the actress, who'd welcomed twins Emme and Max in 2008, told Clevver News while doing press for the film. "You really, really don't. I have to be honest, when I first read the script...I was very familiar with the book. And I thought, 'Oh, they're going to take people through what a pregnancy is, very by-the-book. But they didn't. They kind of flipped that on its head and said, 'No, it's not what you expect at all like in the book. It's the opposite of that.'"
Whether it was the nostalgia talking or how she always felt, Lopez told Allure in 2021, reflecting on a photo of her expectant self at New York Fashion Week in 2008, "I loved being pregnant. I would love to do it again. I remember right after I gave birth, two weeks later, right after this picture, I was like, 'When can I get pregnant again?'"
Lopez was the only female lead whose character doesn't get pregnant, her character, Holly, instead planning to adopt after struggling with infertility. Rodrigo Santoro co-starred as her husband Alex, who at first isn't on the same page about family (or any other kind of) planning. But in real life, Lopez said, "the minute we came together, it was like we were a couple. Through each other, we kind of found the characters, a 'because you know who you are, I know who I am'-type of thing, and we just had that instant chemistry. It's been a really fun experience working with him."
Brooklyn Decker, whose character Skyler is the second-time-around wife of race car driver Ramsey (Dennis Quaid), was fully aware that her onscreen pregnancy was generally not representative of the real thing.
"When I put on [the belly] they were like, 'OK, we need it thinner, and we need it more bronze. Tan the belly. It has to look perfect,'" the model, then 25, told the Los Angeles Times at the film's Hollywood premiere, detailing the approach to Skyler's picture-perfect experience. "I was like, 'This is not fair! This is not what pregnancy looks like.' I'm setting a horrible standard for myself."
But her prosthetic tummy was heavy like all the others, Decker added, because "they wanted the women to have a realistic waddle—truly, that's what they said: 'Realistic waddle.'" And that was enough to nip any baby fever in the bud, the star telling E! News at the movie's New York premiere, "Honestly, it sort of cured any want for any sort of try. It was really fun to wear the belly and I had fun carrying around the babies, but it was really nice to take the belly off at the end of the day."
Now mom to son Hank, 6, and daughter Stevie, 4, with husband Andy Roddick, Decker has made it clear there's no airbrushed version of giving birth. She shared a postpartum photo on Instagram in October that she captioned, "This was me 6 years ago. 1 week after I gave birth to my son. So much blood. So much bruising. Pads and wipes and mesh underwear galore. I was a zombie. It was a shocking experience and not at all unusual.. the reason it was so shocking is simply because I wasn't prepared. No one really talked in depth about the challenges of childbirth recovery. So I started making homemade kits for my girlfriends listing out all the gory details."
Elizabeth Banks, whose children were born via gestational surrogate, played Wendy, the driven owner of a breast feeding boutique who after two years of trying finally gets pregnant—and when she does, she quickly finds out in every uncomfortable way imaginable that you can not plan everything, even if you type it out.
"I play a very relatable lady-gal, a small-business owner who's been dealing with infertility," Banks, then a mom to year-old son Felix (son Magnus was born in November 2012) explained to Entertainment Weekly when the film came out. And "I was familiar with infertility," she continued, "as I think many women my age are, so I went into it with a good understanding of this character and what she'd been through. I really related to the idea that pregnancy is not the be-all, end-all. At the end of the day it's really about those mini human beings."
"It was a magical moment, in a small white room, with a couple of producers—but, it was undeniable," Anna Kendrick quipped of her chemistry with her onscreen partner in procreating, Chace Crawford, whom she had never met until they first read together. Their characters, Rosie and Marco, are rival food truck owners who hook up, resulting in an unexpected pregnancy.
They decide to make a go of it, but Rosie miscarries, sending their burgeoning relationship in a different direction. "I hadn't really been thinking about it as one of the serious storylines," Kendrick told HitFix, "and then as we started shooting it I was like, 'Oh, this is a bummer, I want to do somebody else's part.'"
"I will tell you, if the amount of times people poke your belly when you're actually pregnant is anywhere close to the amount of time they poke your belly when you're wearing a prosthetic thing, then no, I'm not doing it," Kendrick observed to HitFix. "It's like just free rein for everybody to be like, 'Oh my god, that's crazy!' Everybody thinks they're allowed to just come up and start manhandling you."
"People think you've got to learn about parenting," Chris Rock, a father of two daughters and therefore a de facto parental advisor on set, told E! News at the New York premiere. "It's like this thing that happens naturally. If I give you a baby that looks like yours, you will know exactly what to do with it. If it looks like you," he stressed. But, he concluded, "just have fun. They're the most fun things in the world."
Alas, not quite as much bonding among the ladies occurred as the chummy film poster might suggest, all five storylines linked by a character or two, Love Actually-style, but otherwise unfolding separately.
Anna Kendrick did get to meet Jennifer Lopez, though. And, the Pitch Perfect star informed Celebuzz, "It's upsetting as a female, and I would never wish on my worst enemy that you have to meet Jennifer in person, 'cause she is so obscenely beautiful, it's hard to recover from. I met her and it was hard not to be like, 'How are you doing that with your face? How is that really happening?'"
To be expected.