The first mutant delivery has arrived. Lorna gave birth during the season 2 premiere of The Gifted, on Tuesday, September 25, picking up right after the season 1 finale ended. Emma Dumont, who plays Lorna and Polaris on the drama, opened up exclusively to Us Weekly about the experience of shooting such an intense sequence.
“It was a lot. This was the first mutant birth or delivery that we’ve ever seen in any sort of live media, so it’s kind of groundbreaking,” Dumont, 23, admitted, adding that the birth scene would have been hard either way, but since Polaris controls magnetic fields, it just adds more pain to the situation. “Contractions in real life aren’t fun and they’re especially not fun if they pull knives toward you or, like, big cars or cranes, or shut down the entire city of Washington, D.C.”
The actress also noted that while she plays a mutant, it was important that the scene be relatable to human mothers.
“It’s scary. It’s scary having a baby especially as a first-time mother. I think a lot of women can relate to having a moment during the process, where you’re like, ‘You know what? No thanks, I don’t want to do this anymore,’” Dumont said. “Polaris definitely has that moment. She’s like, ‘I’m done.’ The triplets (Skyler Samuels) and Reeva (Grace Byers) have to remind her there’s no stopping.”
However, since a birth has never been depicted on the show or in any of the X-Men films, Dumont “definitely felt pressure” to get it right, and thought it was very important that the scene not be “overdramatic” and to be as “realistic” as possible – as realistic as a mutant birth with cranes crashing through the wall could be. “It became very dramatic and the opposite of what I wanted to do,” she admitted.
“I do feel really responsible to do right by this and make it realistic of our world, but also realistic for the real world,” she continued. “I wanted her body to look like a real mother. She didn’t go down to being normal size. I wore a pregnancy belly during the pregnancy and after the pregnancy, and it got smaller every episode. I definitely just wanted it to be as realistic as possible.”
The Gifted airs on Fox Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET.
With reporting by Emily Foley
