Like many women, This Is Us actress Alexandra Breckenridge was terrified to announce her pregnancy at work. “I was like, ‘I’m gonna get fired,’” the 35-year-old told Us Weekly on Saturday, November 4, at L.A’s Mondrian Hotel. “I was scared to tell them because I thought it would cause issues for production.”
But Breckenridge’s fears were completely unfounded: This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman couldn’t have been happier. “I called Dan and said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m pregnant,’” she recalled to Us of the conversation. “He was just like, ‘Oh, that’s amazing! Congratulations!’ He’s so nice.”
And her onscreen boyfriend Justin Hartley (a.k.a. Kevin Pearson) was just as excited. “Justin’s been very sweet,” she says. “He has a daughter.”
Breckenridge and her husband Casey Hooper (he’s Katy Perry’s guitarist!) are already parents of son Jack, 15 months. They are due to welcome their second child — a baby girl — in four weeks. Breckenridge admits she was praying for a daughter. “Not because I don’t love my boy,” she explained. “I was just scared of having another one because Jack has so much energy and I just thought with two of them I’d never be able to keep up.”
Though Breckenridge indulged in Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream every night when she was pregnant with Jack, she’s exhibiting more restraint with No. 2. “This time around I’m working and I wanted to make production’s job easier at hiding my pregnancy!” she tells Us. “I’ll have it again when I start breast-feeding because you can eat way more when you’re breast-feeding.” To keep her skin smooth and stretch-mark free, Breckenridge has been slathering her body with Palmer’s Cocoa Butter. “It has natural ingredients,” she raved. “You wanna make sure that everything is touching your skin and going into your system is safe.”
Breckenridge’s relationship with Hooper has never been better: “I couldn’t survive without him,” she gushes. But the same can’t be said for her character Sophie’s romance with Kevin in season 2 of This Is Us.
“Kevin and Sophie, they’ve loved each other since they were kids,” says The Walking Dead alum. “They’ve been off and on since they were children. I think that eventually it’s gonna work out for them, or at least I hope it does. I think they have a bond that’s kind of unbreakable.”
