When it comes to portraying the realities of pregnancy, Hollywood doesn’t always deliver. That problem appears to have been solved in “Away We Go,” in which the pregnant protagonist is played by Maya Rudolph, who has made a career of always being real even when her comedy characters are totally unreal. Perhaps what makes “Away We Go,” which co-stars John Krasinski (“The Office”) as the father-to-be, is that the film about expecting a baby doesn’t even include a scene with a baby. It all makes sense considering that the practically impeccable script was co-written by San Francisco writers and co-parents Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida. The Chronicle checked in with Rudolph during her visit to San Francisco in April.
Q:“Away We Go” acknowledges what countless couples often have trouble doing themselves – that men simply never understand what it’s like to be pregnant.
A: Yes. Definitely. It’s strange how pregnancy is one of those things that truly separates us as humans. When I sneeze, you know it’s more or less the same feeling when you do. But you truly don’t know what it’s like to feel anything even remotely like it.
Q:What about kidney stones?
A: (Rudolph answers with … that look that only a woman who has gone through a pregnancy can deliver.)
Q:What made you fall for this role?
A: I fell in love with it pretty quick while reading the script. There was something early on in the conversation between the couple, Bert and Verona, where one of them said: “Please don’t be weird today.” Right then, I knew it was for me. The stuff resonated about how the romance was in simple comments like, “We never fight. We should fight more.” That seemed like a romantic and a real couple. It’s not just like a movie couple. They really are themselves. And they are themselves unto each other.
Q:What do you least have in common with your character?
A: I’m more vocal than Verona. She’s reserved. She doesn’t like to say how she’s feeling. And when she does it’s more of an outburst. I’m probably more of a mixture of the two of them. And they really are one person when they come together.
Q:The film shows pregnancy as being beautiful and stressful – but it also serves as a reminder of how easy it is to forget both kinds of details once the kid finally shows up. Don’t you think?
A: Definitely. Your life before you have a baby is just about you and the person you’re with. You’re really selfish in a healthy way. Then you start coming to terms with the concept of being there truly and wholly for another person who hasn’t shown up yet. If it’s your first pregnancy, you can be way more self-consumed with you as opposed to the baby. You feel like you’re pregnant as opposed to, oh wait, there’s a baby coming. It’s hard to plan for something all day long and still not know what the experience is like until you finally experience it.
Q:Huh?
A: See what I mean?
Q:Seems like another way of showing how men and women prepare for the nesting in different ways. Men feel the need to hunt at Home Depot, where women want to stay home and organize the cabinets for 12 hours straight. Right?
A: It’s true. I really understood why it takes nine months. At first, when I was pregnant, it was like “I want this baby to come tomorrow. Let’s go. Let’s have it.” Then it’s like, “whoa, whoa, whoa. We’ve got to fix a few things around the house and figure some things out.”
Q:What was more uncomfortable: being pregnant in real life, or wearing that very realistic prosthetic belly for this film?
A: Wearing a prosthetic anything is always harder. It was just really hot and awkward. They paste it onto your skin, and they put it on top of a unitard kind of thing. The worst is when I had to pee and take off this whole thing every time. It was a lot lighter than having a real baby.
Q:John Krasinski said he thought the film was the sense of belonging somewhere. Do you agree?
A: Yes. By the way, John is a beautiful guy. A very thoughtful and wonderful human being. Those thoughts came up for me personally. Where am I going to raise my child? Can I do that in my tiny New York City apartment? It’s more about the environment you’re in. It goes back to that nesting thing.
Q:Was the chemistry between you and John as immediate on the set as it appeared on the screen?
A: We met before and had mutual friends, but we didn’t really know each other. The minute we began talking and began to love each other was the minute we started talking about working on this movie together. Maybe it was because our friends were in common or comedy was similar, but we just laughed all the time. We both felt equally responsible for making it great.
Q:One true-to-life element you share with your character is the loss of a parent. Were you thinking of your mother, Minnie Riperton, at all while making this film?
A: Verona kind of packed up her childhood and put it away in a closet and wouldn’t talk about it all because it was too painful. That’s not a part of my life at all. My mom is really alive in my life and very celebrated. Because people know who she was, people talk about her every day. That doesn’t mean it’s not hard to talk about it. But I have gotten a little more used to it than Verona.