Claire Danes opens up about ‘funny shame’ she felt getting pregnant at 44

Claire Danes has said she felt a “funny shame” when she got pregnant at 44 years old.

The star of Netflix’s recent hit series The Beast In Me opened up about her unplanned “blessing” during an appearance on the SmartLess podcast released on Monday (19 November).

She told hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett that she and her husband Hugh Dancy had moved into their current home because of their “oopsy daisy third baby” in 2023.

“I was so old when that happened. I was 44,” Danes said, adding that she “didn’t think it was possible” for her to get pregnant at that age.

The 46-year-old continued: “I did not foresee this at all. And it was weird. Suddenly, I felt like a funny shame. Like I was naughty. Like I had been caught fornicating past the point I was meant to.

“No, it was weird, and it was like I found an edge that I hadn’t been quite conscious of – like I was going outside of the parameters a little bit. That was wild.”

Danes went on to confirm that their third child is a girl, to which Bateman joked that she must have been relieved given that she already has two sons, born in 2012 and 2018.

“I got really, really lucky,” the Romeo & Juliet actor said. “I mean, my OB-GYN was like, ‘You know you're having another boy.’ But no!”

She said she would have been “delighted” to have another son, but is even “more delighted” to have a girl in the family. “She’s pretty cool,” Danes said of her infant daughter, adding that she “loves a tutu”.

Danes and Dancy met in 2006 when filming Evening. They revealed their engagement in February 2009, and got married in a quiet ceremony in France later that year.

The Homeland actor is earning rave reviews for her performance in Netflix’s newly released thriller The Beast In Me.

Danes stars as Aggie Wiggs, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer whose world is dangerously rocked by her new neighbour Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys), a famous business magnate who was suspected of killing his wife.

Also starring in the series, directed by Lila Neugebaue (Causeway) and Antonio Campos (The Devil All the Time) are Brittany Snow, Natalie Morales and Breaking Bad favourite Jonathan Banks.