Despite absolutely crushing it as a mom, Zoe's motherhood had a scary beginning.
Despite absolutely crushing it as a mom, Zoe Saldana's transition into motherhood had a scary beginning.
In a new interview with Allure, the Star Trek Beyond actress opens up about the unsettling experience of having her twin boys two months premature via emergency C-section.
"The boys came at 32 weeks," the 37-year-old actress reveals. "I didn't qualify for an epidural, so I delivered under general anesthetic. I didn't even meet them until a day later."
Thankfully, Cy and Bowie -- Saldana's now 19-month-old children with Italian artist husband Marco Perego -- are amazing, although there is one part of raising kids that Saldana admits is, um... pretty crappy.
"Everybody told me, 'Oh, don't worry, I know you hate changing diapers, but when you have your own kid....'Well, guess what? I had my own kids, and I will do whatever I need to do to not change a dirty diaper," she admits. "There is s**t on the boy; there is s**t on me; there is s**t in my hair. And I'm like, how did this happen?"
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Unfortunately, Saldana found that becoming a mother of two while shooting blockbuster movies exposed some of the double-standards actresses face in Hollywood.
"The tone changed in the negotiations," the actress said of asking for on-set babysitting. "I was starting to feel that I was...difficult."
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"This is a necessity that you must cover for me in order for me to go and perform my job," she notes. "The fact that there are women working in these studios -- and they're the ones [enforcing] these man-made rules. When are we going to learn to stick together?"
"I come from a family of women. Of tough women. Not in a bad way, just resilient, and strong, and determined, and super-opinionated," adds Saldana, who actually found herself at the center of some controversy this year over her casting as legendary singer Nina Simone in a recent biopic based on her life.
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In response to the critiques, Saldana says simply, "There's no one way to be black."
"I'm black the way I know how to be. You have no idea who I am. I am black," she points out. "I'm raising black men. Don't you ever think you can look at me and address me with such disdain."
"I made a choice," the actress explains. "Do I continue passing on the script and hope that the 'right' black person will do it, or do I say, 'You know what? Whatever consequences this may bring about, my casting is nothing in comparison to the fact that this story must be told.'"
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