Julia Louis-Dreyfus has opened up about experiencing an “emotionally devastating” miscarriage when she was 28.
Now 62, the Veep star recalled suffering the loss when she was “quite late” into her first pregnancy.
Speaking on the latest episode of her Wiser Than Me podcast, Louis-Dreyfus described the miscarriage as a “complete nightmare” and revealed she had to be hospitalised after developing an infection.
“When I was 28, I got pregnant for the first time and I was crazy happy,” she said. “I got pregnant easily. I felt very fertile, very womanly.
“And then, quite late in the pregnancy, my husband Brad [Hall] and I discovered that this little foetus was not going to live.”
An infection following the miscarriage meant she had to stay in hospital and was not able to go home until “a couple of days later”.
Louis-Dreyfus, who now shares two children with Hall, added that she was “bedridden” once she returned home as she was not “allowed to get out of bed yet”.
She recalled relying on her mother, who came to stay with her to aid in her recovery, and her husband during that period of her life.
“[My mother] made this incredible cosy chili in a cast iron skillet with cornbread on top of the pan. She and my husband Brad set up a little card table at the foot of the bed,” the Seinfeld star remembered.
Although she was not able to eat the meal as she was not allowed to eat solid foods at the time, she reminisced about how the smell of it was “wonderful”.
“It didn’t matter,” she said. “It was the best meal ever, and I didn’t even eat it. The making of it was so comforting and so embracing.”
Last month, Louis-Dreyfus was presented with a National Medal of Art by US president Joe Biden in a star-studded ceremony at the White House, alongside Bruce Springsteen, Mindy Kaling, and a number of other artists and authors.
She was awarded in recognition of her “humour and wit that has helped redefine American culture”.
In 2017, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and called for universal health care to become a reality in the US. She announced that she was cancer-free in 2020.
She later told People that her family and friends helped her get through the cancer diagnosis and treatment.
“You hear it all the time, but the people that I relied on the most, besides the very capable doctors and nurses who took care of me, were my family and my close friends,” she said.
