Entertainment

Halle Berry Hilariously Explains Her Red Carpet "Baby Bump" Pose

by Maitri Suhas
Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Halle Berry stopped by Watch What Happens Live on Thursday night, and host Andy Cohen asked her a question from a viewer about the pesky pregnancy rumors that plagued Berry back in June after some red carpet photos from the Butterfly Ball surfaced where the actor seemed to be holding her stomach. Berry, who, for the record, isn't pregnant, dispelled the rumors back in June, and on Thursday clarified the exact situation that led to the baby chatter.

"I was not holding my stomach," she told Cohen, and proceeded to demonstrate exactly what happened on the red carpet. Turns out, the pregnancy rumors stemmed from an issue of posing and paparazzi (say that five times fast).

"Can I show you what I did?" Berry asked Cohen who encouraged the reenactment (which you can watch here). Standing, she said, "I was on the red carpet like doing my thing, like boom, boom, boom. And all of a sudden, my hands were down, and I thought, 'I'm gonna put my hands back on my hips,'" she said, moving her hands up under her belly to get to said hips. And that's when all the flashbulbs went off. Because naturally, if you're a woman and your hands are on or near your belly, you are announcing to the world that you're with child.

Thankfully, Berry had a great sense of humor about it, both back in June when she debunked the rumors right away and again Thursday night on WWHL. "I had a pretty big lunch," she told Cohen. "I had a burger and fries. And I was a little poofed out." Cohen responded, "A burger and fries do not make a poof," as if he knows the nuances of Miss Berry's body, but she put him in his place and said yes, on her body, they make a poof. (Many women are familiar with the burger and fry poof.)

Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

"But this is what these tricky MFs do," Berry continued. "They put up pictures and they make it like it's a moment, but that was not a moment."

Cheers to Halle Berry for being such a good sport about something so exhausting, because sure, maybe it's funny that her moving her hands from her side to hips was mistaken as a baby bump cradle, the rumors got ugly quick. When the photos came out and Berry assured people she wasn't pregnant, asking, "Can a girl have some steak and fries?" in an Instagram post, some tweets were unnecessarily hostile. "It's something seriously wrong with Halle Berry posing like she pregnant and she's actually not," one user wrote. That's a bit much, don't you think?

The moral of the story: Don't be a tricky MF, and if a woman says she's not pregnant, believe her. Even if she's lying about it, it's none of your business. Just because someone touches their stomach does not mean they're saying anything about what's in their womb. Calm down and have a burger and fries.