George Clooney tailored The Midnight Sky around Felicity Jones’ pregnancy

George Clooney has revealed he rewrote the script for The Midnight Sky once he discovered co-star Felicity Jones was pregnant during filming.

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In an interview with Empire magazine, Clooney, who directed and produced the film as well as acting in it, discussed how The Midnight Sky became stronger because of Jones’ pregnancy.

“We were going to shoot the space parts in January,” he recounted, sharing: “(Jones) calls me and goes, ‘Uhhh, I’m pregnant’. I was like, ‘Oh, s**t! You’re kidding!’”

Clooney recollected that he and the crew first tried to problem solve using technical solutions to disguise Jones’ baby bump.

“The first thing we tried to do was shoot her and just do head replacement,” he recalled, explaining: “Meaning we shoot each scene with her three times: once with her, once with a body double, and once with nothing in it.”

However, the elaborate set up didn’t work for Jones, Clooney admitted: “We started looking at it and thought, ‘She’s not comfortable in this sort of thing. There’s already enough space stuff, on wires and things. None of us felt comfortable putting her in any kind of position of stress.”

Clooney said ultimately incorporating the pregnancy into the script was much more simple.

“It was really simply sitting down and going, ‘Okay, so, you know, people have sex! They’re going to be in space for a long time and she’s pregnant’,” he noted, reflecting: “I think it ends up adding to the story, in a way. It makes it kind of beautiful by the end.”

Netflix will debut The Midnight Sky in December.