Hollywood is a competitive place, where everyone always wants to be richer, thinner, and tanner than the next person. The latest contest? Who can keep his or her baby the most hidden from the prying eyes of paparazzi and the American public.
Vincent Kartheiser and Alexis Bledel just lapped the rest of the celebrity entrants on the secret child-bearing track with the revelation that they had a son last fall. Us Weekly confirmed on Wednesday that the couple—who have repeatedly ignored a certain admiring Slate staffer’s requests to be adopted by them, but whatever—are now parents, after Bledel’s Gilmore Girls co-star Scott Patterson let it slip to Glamour that Bledel, whom he first met when she was a teenager, is now “a proud new mother.”
Secret babies are one of the hottest accessories in Hollywood: Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling have two children whom they try to keep out of the news; January Jones has a son whose father’s identity she’s never publicly revealed; Megan Fox tried to stay mum on her pregnancy earlier this year; and Kerry Washington, now pregnant with baby No. 2, also takes pains not to discuss her personal life with the media. Other celebrities, such as Sandra Bullock, have adopted in secret only to later reveal their children on their own terms. Of course, the paradox is that the more secret these stars keep their babies, the more interest they generate among gossip-watchers.
Keeping these things a secret looks pretty challenging from the outside: If Bledel was visibly pregnant (details in Us were scarce, so we don’t necessarily know that she was), wouldn’t it have been kind of hard to hide that from photographers, both the professional kind and the everyone-with-a-smartphone-kind? But maybe it’s easier than other celebrities make it look. In a BuzzFeed piece about Washington’s strategy of hiding in plain sight, Anne Helen Petersen wrote, “If no one’s photographed Washington’s daughter’s face in two years, it’s possible for other celebrities to do the same—they just can’t go to the Brentwood Farmers Market. Or build brands contingent on their roles as mothers.”
Bledel and Kartheiser do not seem like the type to be crushed about missing out on the Brentwood Farmers Market. Their wedding was also a secret, and the two are known for being “not Hollywood”—well, that’s more Kartheiser, who once told reporters that he did not own a toilet or a car. For her part, Bledel is 34 now, but in her early 20s she was already telling Vanity Fair that in contrast to her peers, her idol was Gandhi, she owned no Juicy Couture outfits, and she didn’t have a celebrity crush because “The whole illusion for me is completely gone.” It’s no surprise that the girl who said that did not wind up parading her baby bump down the red carpet.
On another note, don’t let the deliciousness of Scott Patterson, who played Luke on Gilmore Girls, leaking this news be lost on you. It was always rumored that there was Margulies-Panjabi–style beef between him and Gilmore co-star Lauren Graham. Yammering to the press about someone’s secret baby will probably not win him any points on the set of Netflix’s upcoming revival of the show.
