Iāve actually been tempted to make a comparative deep dive into that situation, but Iām not sure whether people would be interested or Iām just a nerd. ///
Uh, yes. I am very interested. This is probably the first time I've actively followed a celebrity's love life. I want to know how it went for others to compare. Also, a three month hidden pregnancy???? Wild.
Ha, well you asked for it! Fair warning: this ended up being longer than I expected. It was fun for me to go down fandom memory lane, but I doubt anyone cares as much as I do. I present...
Jeffrey Dean Morgan & Hilarie Burton: A Deep-Dive Into An Age-Gap Relationship and "Secret" Pregnancy
First some background on the main people involved.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan is an actor best known for his roles in The Watchmen and The Walking Dead. Though at the time of our story, he was better known as "Papa Winchester" on Supernatural and Denny Duquette on Grey's Anatomy. By the time he was in his early forties, he'd been married and divorced years earlier and had a dedicated fanbase that loved his down-to-earth persona and devotion to his dog, Bisou (sound familiar?).
He wasn't famous enough to be in the tabloids much, but he did get some good press from 2006 - 2008 for his on-and-off relationship with single mom and actress, 40-something year old Mary Louise Parker. Case in point:
JDM and MLP were engaged at one point in 2008 and were even seen together in 2009 after they broke it off. Which is why people were surprised when he was spotted shortly thereafter with...
Hilarie first found fame as a VJ on MTV's Total Request Live in the early 2000s, after basically being discovered on the streets of NYC as a teenager. A few years later, she went onto star in the ensemble teen soap drama One Tree Hill for six seasons. She had a serious relationship with a son of the show's executive producer for most of the show's run, and has since spoken about the frequent sexual harassment she faced from the show's creator and main visionary, Mark Schwann.
Due in part to this harassment, Hilarie announced in April 2009 that she would not return to One Tree Hill for season seven. (She had apparently ended things with her partner the year before.) Before her departure from the show, she had co-founded a production company - Southern Gothic Productions, or SoGoPro - that was based out of Wilmington, NC where the show filmed. I believe her plans when announcing her departure were to pivot her focus to SoGoPro full-time while auditioning for other roles.
Because this happened 13+ years ago, I can no longer find the original article. However, circa June 2009 a local paper in New Mexico published an article saying that JDM and Hilarie had been spotted having lunch in Santa Fe, near the set of JDM's latest movie. His fans - myself included at the time - didn't know what to make of it. After all, he'd been spotted with Mary-Louise a month ago, and Hilarie didn't seem to be his "type." JDM was newly 43 at the time, and she was 26. People thought perhaps they were just friends, or were meeting to discuss film projects. The only problem is that tweets like this had started popping up:
I should note that this happened before stan Twitter or Tumblr really took off and most of the fan discussion took place on forums that have since been removed from the web. So, it's hard to capture what the reaction was at the time. But this gives a sense:
Years later, JDM provided this background in an interview:
(The Jensen he's referring to is Jensen Ackles, his Supernatural co-star. Danneel, Jensen's wife, is Hilarie's former One Tree Hill co-star and close friend. The last line is a joke...I think.)
From this point forward, receipts of the disgruntled stan discourse get even harder to find, because it took place almost entirely on an obscure forum called The Chatting Place created for the sole purpose of trash talking the relationship. There's only one screengrab available on the Wayback Machine, which shows it was frequented by a relatively small but obsessive group of nearly 200 people:
So, I'll focus on the facts as I remember them surrounding what I'll jokingly call...
The Hidden Pregnancy Revelations
As I mentioned above, Hilarie was focused on her production company SoGoPro at the time. Unlike most production companies, SoGoPro placed a big emphasis on building a community of fans by being very transparent about projects that were still in development. One way they did this was through speaking direct-to-camera, vlog style, and reporting on their progress.
You know how Chris fans will deduce his location by taking a video or picture background and cross-referencing it with information on his location they've obtained through sketchy means? JDM fans did the same to varying degrees of intensity, and were able to determine that Hilarie and JDM were spending a fair amount of time together. Specifically, they
Complained when Hilarie featured JDM's newly adopted dog Bandito briefly in one of the vlogs (I can't remember if fans knew JDM had adopted Bandito at this point, or they merely suspected given his love of dogs)
Deduced that she flew with him to Puerto Rico while he filmed The Losers because of her hotel background and the fact that she referenced humidity affecting her hair
Noticed that she filmed several videos in his LA house because they recognized the ceiling beams from the sales listing
By the end of '09, there were rumors circulating from self-professed "Wilmington, NC insiders" who said it was known around town that Hilarie was pregnant. The idea of people from that town having insider info was believable, as gossip often leaked from the set of One Tree Hill and later proved to be accurate.
Still, stans and haters alike were skeptical and increasingly vicious in their criticism of both people, especially Hilarie. She was called a vapid gold digger, a witch with a B, and other degrading epithets. JDM was called a dirty old man who was clearly going through a mid-life crisis and God help him if he'd been stupid enough to be "trapped" by her getting knocked up.
Keep in mind, there was zero solid proof of this, but stans clung to the one piece of evidence they had, the SoGoPro vlogs. I'll try to discuss this as delicately as possible, but essentially: Hilarie had always been very thin, to the point that some people mocked her for it. In late '09 and early 2010, people noticed that her face looked fuller, and she never filmed below the neck. (I was going to post pics, but that feels tacky and body-shamey, so you'll have to take my word for it.) People also zeroed in on awkward abdomen-avoiding camera maneuvers like this as evidence:
Even so, no one had any hard evidence, and stans got more and more cruel inside their rage-filled echo chambers. As far as I know, Hilarie responded only once to the harassment, albeit indirectly in a blog:
This is getting long, so another fast forward to April 2010...
To be honest, I don't even remember seeing Chris in these pictures. What I do remember is stans taking one look at the photos of Hilarie and JDM making their couple debut on the red carpet and declaring the pregnancy rumors true. (Again, there's no way to say this delicately, but her figure looked different than it had in the past, so people took it as proof she was post-partum.)
While the baby announcement hadn't yet been made, the two were mocked by gossip pundits for their age gap, with most of the ire landing on Hilarie (source):
Stans popped off in the comments, mentioning the baby rumors as if they were confirmed:
It took another couple weeks, but the birth of Hilarie and Jeffrey's son was eventually announced in early May 2010:
Side note: That sentence about JDM learning he had a five-year-old years after the fact turned out to be based on a false paternity claim, but that's a whole other story.
Well, it depends on who "they" are. If by "they" you mean the stans who viciously mocked and bullied a pregnant women, most wandered off to lick their wounds, though some stuck around for years afterward - poisoning comment sections and aggregating misleading timelines. If the Chris Evans' conspiracists want a peek at their future, here's some suggested reading. You'll find it eerily familiar.
If by "they" you mean Hilarie and JDM, well, here's the short version:
They moved from Los Angeles to the Hudson Valley in New York state
They bought a big farm where they tend chickens, cattle, donkeys, and llamas
They co-own a candy store with Paul Rudd
After years of secondary infertility and multiple miscarriages, they welcomed a daughter - George - in 2018
They got legally married in 2019
Hilarie wrote a book about their farm and love story
They started a whiskey brand together
...and basically seem pretty freaking happy.
A recent family photo from NYE
A Note / Comparison Re: Chris and Alba
The reason I spent time compiling and posting this is two-fold. First, it's fun to remember days of fandom past, though it's probably not the most productive use of my time.
Second, there are some obvious parallels to the current Chris and Alba situation. Two people, sixteen years apart in age. A woman who got into the business as a teenager and is transitioning from a TV show to other projects. A long-time dog-loving bachelor who'd won internet points for a back-and-forth relationship with a woman in his age range. Infuriated stans who predict a relationship's downfall and make hay of the age gap. Despite all that, Hilarie and JDM are still together nearly 14 years later, and seemingly a really sweet, close family.
Now, does that mean that Chris and Alba will have the same fate? No, not necessarily. There are differences between the couples, too. Alba is from another country, which is a complicating factor, and may not have had a years-long relationship before Chris like Hilarie did before JDM. On the other hand, there's zero inclination that they're planning a baby anytime soon, so that's one less complication. And to be fair, I don't know for sure if Hilarie and JDM are truly happy, or just good at seeming happy on social media.
The truth is that none of us know the future, just like none of the JDM stans knew in 2009. Heck, by her own admission, Hilarie didn't even know if she and Jeff would make it in the beginning. So, maybe let's stop breathing down Chris and Alba's necks and speaking confidently about what will or won't happen? Or at least be happy there's no pregnancy involved...
I'll leave you with a quote from Hil's book, which I highly recommend:
"When [Jeffrey and I] made the choice to cast off the skin of our former lives, it was with tremendous uncertainty. We barely knew each other. But this place and this life were worth the risk. They were worth the hardships we faced. They were worth every effort...Love is like farm work. It requires consistency, and imagination. Your body will ache and you will be fatigued, but there is no greater reward than seeing the fruits of your labor."
