'Kinda Pregnant': Amy Schumer pushed for more 'intimate' and 'vulnerable' moments in comedy about motherhood

After writing and starring in the beloved 2015 movie Trainwreck, there was incredible excitement that Amy Schumer is leading a new movie, Kinda Pregnant on Netflix, also serving as a producer and co-writer of the film. Directed by Tyler Spindel, also featuring Jillian Bell, Brianne Howey, Will Forte, Urzila Carlson and Damon Wayans Jr., the film is laugh-out-loud funny, but also makes room to show some very real conversations between women on screen.

In Kinda Pregnant Schumer plays Lainy, a teacher who, from a young age, wanted to be a mom, particularly after losing her own mother when she was six. When she mistakenly thinks her boyfriend, played by Wayans Jr. is going to propose, leaving her steps behind on the journey to motherhood she imagined, she finds out her best friend Kate (Bell) is pregnant.

Lainy's first response to the news is, "Get rid of it!" While an extreme reaction, Lainy has an overwhelming feeling of jealously about her friend's pregnancy, which hits its peak when Lainy decides to wear a fake baby bump to walk through the world as a pregnant woman.

Her first stop is a yoga class for expecting mothers where she meets Megan (Howey), who's pregnant with her second child and is very much over the "everything about pregnancy is a beautiful gift" thinking. She's tired and sore, and wants to be more honest about what pregnancy is really like for women.

As the two develop a friendship, it gets increasingly harder for Lainy to continue to live two lives, especially when she starts to develop feelings for Megan's brother, Josh, played by Will Forte.

Amy Schumer pushed for one scene to be more 'intimate' and 'vulnerable'

As Howey explained, she got the "best of both worlds" with her character in Kinda Pregnant, hysterical comedy, but also being part of a story that doesn't shy away from showing complex realities of motherhood, and the pressure on women to be "good" mothers.

"We got to lean into the comedy, but also lean into these vulnerable moments," Howey told Yahoo Canada. "And I've got to hand it to Ty, our director, and Amy, our captain, for kind of having all these different tones."

The actor highlighted that there's one scene in particular where Schumer wanted to really have a moment of honesty and vulnerability between Lainy and Megan. When Megan invites Lainy to her home to have dinner with her family for the first time, there's a hysterical mishap where Lainy's baby bump catches on fire, with Lainy having to run to the bathroom to try to conceal the fake bump.

But when Megan goes to check on her, Megan wants to sit in the bathroom and talk about the "isolating" feeling of being a mother, and her frustration that women don't feel comfortable sharing what happens in childbirth, including the trauma women feel before, during and after the process. That's when Megan opens up about her own trauma with the birth of her first child, and Lainy talks about the impact of losing her mom when she was a child.

"Amy had this great idea to have that one bathroom scene, ... to raise the stakes in a different way, and to talk about these uncomfortable subjects, to bring them to light, because that is our humanity, and that's what's real," Howey said.

"That scene, I'm so proud of, and that trust that Bri and I had for each other, and that Tyler, our director, that they empowered us, and they listened to us," Schumer said in a separate interview. "To the night before you're filming that scene to go, 'We threw away the scene and now it's this other scene, and we want to shoot it like this, and we want it to be really intimate and slow.'"

"With all the ADD theatre where everything is TikTok and we're like, 'No, no, no, we've earned the right to have this slow-moving scene where these women really connect and talk about what it's like. And I think a lot of women are going to relate to that scene and that moment, and appreciate it. And I'm so proud of the vulnerable moments in this movie, probably more so than the comedy."

'She knows the balance of what's going to be the best thing to get the laugh, and to help the movie'

Another highlight of Kinda Pregnant is seeing the ups and downs in Lainy and Kate's friendship, and that relationship is something that really enticed Bell to join the project, even though when Schumer approached her about the project Bell was directing her first feature film and had COVID-19.

"I just adored the relationship, because I just thought it was so real and honest and something you don't see all the time," Bell said. "And I just was so in love with the idea that these friends can kind of be their worst selves in front of each other."

But as Forte also stressed, Schumer committed to making the film as funny as possible, in a way that's best for the story, in addition to its emotional moments.

A perfect example of that is a sex scene between Josh and Lainy, where the couple want to be intimate, but obviously Josh can't find out that Lainy's baby bump isn't real, leading to a particularly hilarious moment in the film.

"She's just willing to do anything, really," Forte said. "It is a, 'I will do anything ... for the laugh and for the good of the movie.'"

"Sometimes just getting the laugh is going to hurt the movie, but she knows the balance of what's going to be the best thing to get the laugh, and to help the movie. And so to have that kind of control, then that sex scene is successful."

From sex scenes and farting at mommy yoga, to really deep, emotional and honest conversations between women, Kinda Pregnant captures the comedy, tragedy and beauty in life in a uniquely raw, but hysterical way. It's a tough balance to achieve, and Schumer may be one of the only talents that could execute it with success.