So many celebrities were able to hide pregnancies and births during 2020 thanks to the 2020 COVID-19 home lockdowns. Many others conceived “quarantine babies” while stuck at home. But actress Billie Lourd is making sure that fans know her son Kingston‘s conception and September birth had nothing to do with the coronavirus. The 28-year-old says that she was already expecting when lockdowns went into effect in March 2020, after getting pregnant while on a Caribbean vacation with her fiance Austen Rydell.
“He’s not technically a quarantine baby. And I want to make that known because a lot of people are having trendy quarantine babies. Kingston was conceived before quarantine,” the American Horror Story: 1984 star explained to her restauranteur stepdad Bruce Bozzi, on his SiriusXM show, Quarantined With Bruce, on January 7, 2021. “He’s technically just a Caribbean baby,” Billie shared. Billie and Austin took a vacation over the 2019 Christmas and New Years holidays to the British Virgin Islands with Bruce and her dad, CAA parter Bryan Lourd.
She said that of lockdown, “it turned out to be kind of a blessing in disguise” because she was able to keep her first pregnancy just between close family. None of her fans even knew she was expecting until after she’d already given birth. Billie revealed in a Sept. 24 Instagram post “Introducing…Kingston Fisher Lourd Rydell,” with a photo of her infant son’s tiny feet.
“I got to keep it to myself, and only my family knew and nobody else knew,” she told Bruce. “Everyone was so surprised when we posted that little picture of his feet, and it got to just be something I shared with the people I loved the most, which was so incredible and made my pregnancy so magical and wonderful, which I did not expect it was going to be, but it turned out to be the greatest experience.”
Neither Billie or Austen shared any IG photos that showed her pregnant belly, so fans were none the wiser that she was expecting a baby through the first nine months of 2020. The former Scream Queens star that she and Austen spent lockdown eating “great food,” playing “Legos all the time” and spending quality time with loved ones, including Bryan and Bruce. Her mom is beloved late actress Carrie Fisher, who died of a heart attack on Dec. 27, 2016. Her late grandmother Debbie Reynolds was also a Hollywood icon, who tragically passed away a day after her beloved daughter died. After that one-two punch of crushing loss, Billie deserves all the happiness in the world now with the family she’s started.
Billie said that she “loved” being pregnant, and that Austen took such good care of her while she was expecting their baby. “Now we know each other better than anybody could ever know each other,” she said. “He was so caring and incredible and cooked for me and gave me foot massages and did these classes with me. Like, he did the lactation class, he did the positive birthing class. So he was with me every step of the way,” Billie revealed, adding, “And we just became even closer friends, even better partners. And I think it prepared us to be the best parents.”