Pretty Little Liars

In fall 2010 straight-A high school student Gaby Rodriguez from Toppenish, Washington, surprised her classmates when she told them she was pregnant. Six months later she shocked them again, this time revealing that she had faked the pregnancy for her senior project.

In a time where MTV’s Teen Mom is becoming an obsession and high school students are making pacts to have babies together, Gaby, whose own mother first got pregnant at 14, wanted to explore the true consequences of being pregnant in high school – and the results weren’t pretty.

Titled “Stereotypes, Rumors and Statistics” her project made headlines long after she removed the fake baby bump, and on January 28 a movie about her experience premieres on Lifetime.

We got on the phone with director Norman Buckley (who is also a director for Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars) and the star of the movie, Alexa Vega, to get their thoughts on The Pregnancy Project and its importance beyond the world of entertainment.

Wetpaint Entertainment: Why did you want to get involved in this project?

Alexa Vega: I got a phone call that there was a great opportunity to play this wonderful character, Gaby Rodriguez, and they explained to me that it was a true story. I can't believe Gaby went through all of this, because she's only 17 when it happened.

I remember seeing this on the news, but never quite understood the motivation for it. Why did she do it?

Alexa: She grew up in a family where all of her sisters were teen moms. Her brother was a teen father at 17. Her mother had her first child at 15, was pregnant at 14. This is something that was really alive in her life. And the one thing that she kept hearing over and over again from her brother and sisters was, “It's going to happen to you.”

After a while, she was really annoyed by it. And she thought, “You know what? I'm going to prove to my family that you can be pregnant and finish high school and go to college and get a job.” And Gaby really came up with a wonderful essay, presented herself to her principal and some teachers, and that's what got her project approved. It was a very well thought out plan.

Norman: Those were her conscious reasons for this project, but we talked a lot about what would drive her to do this, which was the enormous pressure she felt from her family to accomplish something. To not fall prey to the same expectation that everyone else in the family had fallen prey to. She found this very subversive way to both accomplish something very important and gauge what their reaction would be if she failed to do something important. I just felt it was very ingenious.

It seems that even though it was a study about how to succeed while pregnant, it became a study of how other people encourage you to fail.

Alexa: Absolutely. People are super judgmental, and I feel like especially with what's going on with show's glorifying these teen moms, and the trashy magazines having teen moms on the cover — they cheapen it so much. What Gaby learned is, the more people can be supportive of these young girls who are in this situation, the more opportunities they have. But it's going to be hard. And it's not just hard on the teen mom, it's hard on the teen's family, the boyfriend, or whoever the father of the baby is. It's hard on everybody.

Do you know how many times Gaby just wanted to call it quits and stop the project?

Alexa: Oh, my gosh, she mentioned a couple of times where it just got so stressful and so frustrating. I mean she was on an emotional roller coaster. But at the end of the day, she thought, “This is bigger than just me.” She really put all her selfish needs aside and just dove into this thing headfirst and came out with something pretty amazing. But I don't know how she truly lived it for six and a half months. It's a testament really to who she is.

Norman: The drama of the movie is basically about the growing pressure she felt over the six months. By the end, she was in a very, very vulnerable place. It's quite a lovely film in terms of the growth of the character, where she comes from in the beginning and how she views things, and where she gets to in the end and the vulnerability she feels based upon the enormous judgment that she receives, both from her family and her friends and her teachers. It was pretty intense.

What kind of responsibility did you guys feel toward Gaby in making this film?

Norman: I feel a real responsibility to tell the girl's story with dignity, for sure. She's a real person, and she's a good person. At the same time, there is a lot of moral complexity in what she did. There were a lot of repercussions. I’m a gay man, and If I had been in high school and somebody had befriended me and told me that they were also gay, and then I found out after six months later that this was just an experiment, I would feel completely blind-sided. So one of the things we really examined in the film is also how her friends reacted and the repercussions of that.

At the end of the day, it's a drama, but it absolutely captures the real girl’s experience. But I also think that there is a larger universal story that's being told about the way that people are in search of an identity, and how much of that identity is imposed from the outside. She just happened to use this particular venue of being pregnant as a way to examine issues of identity, but her larger project became about the way that people stereotype, the way gossip can really harm and injure people.

It is an interesting time, as you mentioned, with Teen Mom and the Pregnancy Pact.

Alexa: I don't really understand it, but it's an issue. And It's a really relevant issue that's happening right now.

To see The Pregnancy Project, tune into Lifetime on January 28, 8pm/7c.

Get your Pretty Little Liars fix: Like us on Facebook and Follow us on Twitter and Tumblr!