Charlotte pregnant | Special delivery | Double delight
15th July 2006 - TV Week
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Special delivery
Charlotte Beaumont can’t hide her joy. The popular All Saints doctor is going to have a baby!
As viewers will know, Charlotte – who suffered a tragic miscarriage a while back – has longed to become a mother.
“Charlotte is really happy and comfortable with being pregnant,” says Tammy MacIntosh, who plays her. “With her last experience of being pregnant and the loss that she suffered, she has always wanted to have a child.”
It soon becomes clear that the father of Charlotte’s baby is Spence (Peter Phelps) when the paediatrician, currently working in Africa, sends a bundle of balloons and a giant teddy bear to the ED for Charlotte.
With that, Charlotte’s secret is out! Needless to say, everyone is thrilled for her.
“Her work crew is really so happy for her,” Tammy says. “It’s a good time.”
And it’s also clear that Spence couldn’t be more thrilled about becoming a dad. But, as Tammy says, Charlotte may well have been worried that wasn’t going to be the case.
“We don’t see it on screen,” reveals Tammy, “but I imagine she’s thought through the whole process of having to call a man – who she hasn’t spent that long with – to tell him they’re having a baby. They had a great relationship, then he had to leave and head overseas for his work.”
“But I assume that she’d thought through the repercussions of him saying, ‘I don’t want to come back and I don’t want to commit to that.’ Or, at the other end of the spectrum, him saying, ‘I do want to come back and I do want to be part of your life.’
I think she would be a bit worried about his reaction. It feels completely irresponsible for a woman in her mid-thirties, especially one who’s a doctor and knows something about contraception, to have to make that phone call of, ‘Whoops!’” she adds, laughing.
But will Spence give up his work in Africa to return to Charlotte’s side? We’ll have to wait and see!
Double delight
All Saints’ Tammy MacIntosh will give birth twice – in real life and on screen!
When Tammy MacIntosh found out she was pregnant, she didn’t quite get the gasps of shock she’d been expecting.
“I think after nearly everyone from work came to my wedding, they all just quietly said, ‘Let’s get prepared for a baby’”, says Tammy, whose character, Charlotte, finds out this week she’s also going to have a child. “I think they were much more prepared for it taking place than I was! Our producer was like, ‘I’m way ahead of you! I had this planned for ages.’”
This may have been the case, but unfortunately they didn’t quite get the timing right. Although Tammy’s now pregnant both on and off the show, she’s actually about three months ahead of Charlotte, which means after giving birth in real life, she’ll have to return to work and do it all over again. No wonder she finds it all a little daunting.
“I’m going to have to go back and wear a pregnancy suit,” she says, laughing. “I’m life, ‘what if I have an horrific birth and don’t want to relive it?’”
Although Tammy admits she’s having a few pre-birth jitters, all up she’s feeling really good. “I think I’ve got to a place where I’m a bit used to it now,” she admits.
But it wasn’t always like that. In the first few months of her pregnancy, she suffered terrible morning sickness and struggled with the long hours on set.
“The first half, I was really sick, and I found it hard to accept that I had to completely surrender who I knew Tammy to be,” she explains. “My memory, my organisation skills, my efficiency, my physical prowess – this was all taken from me and I thought, ‘what do I have left now?’
What’s weird is that Charlott’es going through all that now, too, which is great because it means (the writers) can write all those things in because they, and I, know all the nuances of pregnancy so well.”
Interestingly, the writers have chosen not to put too much emphasis on exactly how pregnant Charlotte is on screen. “I think this is a good thing,” Tammy explains, “because you never actually hear that she is so many weeks, so you kind of get carried around with her in this haze of pregnancy and watch her grow, and it’s left up to you to wonder how pregnant she really its.”
This is all well and good, but when you’re about five months along and teetering around in high heels, things can get a little tricky.
“It was hard getting around in Charlotte’s two-and-a-half-inch heels,” Tammy says. “I can’t tell you what a duck I looked! ‘Quack quack’ all the way down the corridor. It hurt my hips and back so much. So in every take where you don’t see my feet, I’m in my ugh boots!”
That wasn’t the only wardrobe glitch. Early on, Tammy also had trouble at fittings. In one instance, she grew so much over a weekend that the white shirt that had been meticulously fitted for her on the Friday before wasn’t doing up on the Monday, and they were on location.
“I said to the wardrobe girl – and it’s like four in the afternoon and she’d been wearing her clothes since 3am – ‘You’re going to have to give me your T-shirt because I have nothing else to wear!’”
Although Tammy’s hesitant to reveal her due daye, it’s not long now until she heads off on maternity leave. At this stage, she’s planning on taking 12 weeks off, but that could change after the baby is born.
“Libby Tanner (who played Bron) said to me, ‘Don’t go back after 12 weeks because it will kill you,’” says Tammy, who admits she’s been talking to her former co-star for advice. “But then Georgie Parker said, ‘No, I kind of liked going back for little bits and pieces.’ So who do I listen to? But I’ve learned you can’t really listen to anyone; you’ve just got to do what feels right.”