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Is That a Baby Bump, Natalie Portman? Cause We’re Kvellin’.

And do you need name ideas? Because we’ve got the perfect one, too.

by
Rachel Shukert
September 09, 2016
Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images
Natalie Portman attends the premiere 'Planetarium' at the 73rd Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, September 8, 2016. Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images
Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images
Natalie Portman attends the premiere 'Planetarium' at the 73rd Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, September 8, 2016. Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images

We’ve been wondering when it would happen. We’ve hoped we’d be privy to it when it did. We didn’t want to pry or, God forbid, or make it seem like we were putting pressure on her because we know how that feels and it doesn’t feel good.

But now, the jig is up—the news revealed by way of a clingy and vaguely bridal evening gown on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival, where Natalie Portman’s new film Planetarium had its premiere this week: That’s right, the Princess of Hollywood and Queen of the Hebrews is expecting her second child. Hail.

Of course, this isn’t all exactly confirmed, although, when someone with a scrupulously lithe and teeny, tiny, dancer-body (to paraphrase the words of trainer to the stars Tracy Anderson, which still have the power to send me into a panic attack every time I enter a dressing room) as Portman owns, shows up in public looking like she did (and according to eyewitness accounts, repeatedly “rubbing her belly”) one has to assume. One assumes also that the father is her husband, French ballet dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, but that’s just the beauty part of the Jewish laws of religious inheritance and Jewish culture in general: it doesn’t really matter (amirite, ladies?).

We couldn’t be more happy for Portman and this latest piece of mazel on her unimpeded stride across the planet. Remember, her directorial debut, A Tale of Love and Darkness, premiered at Cannes last year and recently had a limited run in the U.S.; and she’s in a new movie where she plausibly plays the sister of Lily-Rose Depp, who is 17 years old. (Portman is 35.) In an industry that can cast Angelina Jolie as Colin Ferrell’s mother (see Alexander, or wait, on second thought, don’t see it) that’s a major triumph. (Yes, I’m as age-obsessed as any other Hollywood asshole now. Sue me.) We’ll look forward to seeing her on the award circuit again this year, blossoming in her haute couture maternity wear.

And the name, I mean, is obvious. She’s already got a son named Aleph. Shouldn’t the daughter—God willing—be Bette?

Rachel Shukert is the author of the memoirs Have You No Shame? and Everything Is Going To Be Great,and the novel Starstruck. She is the creator of the Netflix show The Baby-Sitters Club, and a writer on such series as GLOW and Supergirl. Her Twitter feed is @rachelshukert.