Halle Bailey also explained why Hollywood's unrealistic postpartum standards do not affect her.
After the birth of her son, Halo, in 2023, Halle Bailey has a very important reminder for fellow moms: "Enjoy all of it and don't let yourself drown."
"Remember how special you are as your own person," the Little Mermaid star told ET's Denny Directo at the 2024 ESPY Awards, "and yeah, keep going for your dreams I would say."
The Color Purple actress is doing just that as she's next set to appear in Atlantis, a coming-of-age musical directed by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind's Michel Gondry and produced by Pharrell, whose childhood in Virginia Beach inspired the project.
"It was such a beautiful experience because I think it was really empowering for me and I needed to know like, oh, I still can do this, like, I still am all these things and a mother is just added to that," she said of working on the project postpartum. "It made me feel really good."
As the 24-year-old new mom explained, she also does not feel the pressure of fulfilling Hollywood's physical expectations of moms after carrying a child.
"I feel like I've had beautiful women around me to remind me like, 'Girl, you can take your time,'" she said. "'You're fine,' like, so I feel good just living."
After all, Bailey set her boundaries around motherhood from the start. Despite ongoing public speculation, Bailey did not utter a public word about her pregnancy until after giving birth to her first child with boyfriend DDG.
"There was no way in hell I was going to share the biggest joy of my world with anyone," she said during her acceptance speech at the Essence Black Women in Hollywood Awards in March. She added that her son "was my gift, is the greatest blessing and I had no obligation to expose him, me or my family to that unyielding spotlight."
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