Was Dakota Fanning really pregnant in ‘The Perfect Couple’?

The following article contains spoilers for the end of The Perfect Couple.

As of late, Dakota Fanning has had a decent run under the Netflix crime umbrella. First cast as Marge in Ripley, she also stars in the limited series, The Perfect Couple.

Based on Elin Hilderbrand’s popular book of the same name, the show delves into the lives of the affluent Winbury family of Nantucket. In addition to Fanning’s casting, Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber also add to the high caliber of the series. As in the book, the lives of the Winburys are rocked when the maid of honor at their son’s imminent wedding is killed. The six-episode series follows the efforts to discover who murdered Merritt (Meghann Fahy), and the secrets revolving around the rich family. However, there is an even bigger mystery that fans have been trying to uncover at the center of the show.

Was Dakota Fanning’s pregnancy real in The Perfect Couple?

The Perfect Couple flashes back to the events leading up to the murder and the investigation following Merritt’s murder. Merritt was the maid of honor to Amelia (Eve Hewson), a true fish out of water. Raised more humbly than the Winburys, Amelia doesn’t fit into the mold of what matriarch Greer (Kidman) would like. This source of tension adds to the increasingly complicated family dynamics such as the relationship of the eldest son, Thomas (Jack Raynor), and his wife, Abby (Fanning). Abby is clearly accustomed to the life she has married into, and well into her pregnancy at the time of the murder. Fanning uses the pregnancy in a fascinating way in the show, as an extension of herself. This is so believable that even The Hollywood Reporter wondered if it was real or not. Fanning confirmed that her expanded stomach was not due to a real-life pregnancy.

“It was an amazing prosthetic. I didn’t wear that one all the time — there was a different one that I wore under clothes — but there was no way she was going to wear a one-piece at the pool. It to be a bikini and you had to see the belly. But we really had to get it right. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. And it wasn’t a glued-on situation, I put it on like a corset so it wrapped around my whole body and tied in the back. I was laying there so you never saw my back; it was just so seamless from every side.

The prosthetic was so convincing that even those on set marveled at Fanning’s appearance. It was important to get this visual authentic, because Abby’s pregnancy serves a two-fold purpose. Not only does it encapsulate Abby’s commitment to the Winbury family, but serves as a red herring for the end of the series. As it turns out, Merritt’s murderer wasn’t someone directly in the Winbury scope, but slightly on the outskirts. Abby kills Merritt as a way to preserve her own legacy. After learning that Merritt is pregnant with patriarch Tag’s (Schreiber) lovechild, Abby views this as a threat to her own inheritance. Fanning plays this part coolly and impressively, which she also discussed with the outlet.

“The part about Abby that we ended up leaning into the most was that once she’s done the murder, she’s forgotten that she’s the murderer. In a way, she’s disassociated from that and compartmentalized it in some sociopathic, pathological way. It almost doesn’t exist in her mind. ” 

Fanning pulls out all the stops in this captivating murder mystery, now streaming on Netflix.