Michelle Dockery has revealed she’s pregnant with her first child.
The 43-year-old debuted her baby bump on the red carpet at the premiere of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale in London’s Leicester Square this week.
The British actress was joined by her husband, film producer Jasper Waller-Bridge, the brother of Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
The couple tied the knot in 2023 in a ceremony attended by her Downton Abbey co-stars, eight years after her fiancé, Irish publicist John Dineen, died from a rare form of cancer when he was just 34 years old.
“I don’t have the vocabulary to describe what it felt like. And what it still feels like. It is …” the Defending Jacob star said in an interview with The Guardian in 2017.
“I’ve never been more committed to anything in my life than to him. So at the time everything just shut down. Work, everything. Work didn’t matter. You suddenly become an [oncological] expert. This stuff becomes your world, and that of course was my priority.”
The actress said even when John was given a terminal diagnosis, she still had hope.
“I’m not exaggerating when I say that John did not complain once, never, not once, and that gave us strength. It’s what keeps you going, that positivity — to never lose that hope for a miracle. I couldn’t have done it any other way.”
Michelle, who plays a young widow named Lady Mary Crawley in Downton Abbey, said she could see the similarities between her character’s storyline and her own life.
“We were engaged, and married at heart, and so I do consider myself a widow. It’s why I related to her so much,” she said.
“One of the most difficult things at the time was the parallels with Mary,” she also told The Telegraph. “It was just baffling, and still is to me, that my character’s storyline was so similar.”
Michelle and 37-year-old Jasper first met in 2019 through mutual friends.
In January 2022, the couple announced they were engaged.
“The engagement is announced between Jasper, son of Michael Waller-Bridge of King’s Lynn, Norfolk, and Teresa Waller-Bridge of Battersea, London, and Michelle Dockery, younger daughter of Michael and Lorraine Dockery of Gidea Park, Essex,” the announcement in The Times newspaper read at the time.
The couple tied the knot in 2022 in ceremony which was attended by their celebrity friends including Lily James, Hugh Bonneville, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Joanne Froggatt and Lesley Manville.
According to the Daily Mail, Michelle and Jasper might not be the only couple in the family expecting a new arrival.
The publication sparked pregnancy rumours after publishing photos of Jasper’s sister Phoebe Waller-Bridge wearing denim overalls during a rare outing in London recently.
The Fleabag creator has been in a relationship with British-Irish filmmaker Martin McDonagh since 2018.
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