SUPERSTORE: Lauren Ash on Dina’s Evolution Post-Pregnancy

SUPERSTORE has tackled all kinds of real-world issues (ranging from undocumented immigrantion to the complexity of workers’ rights), but one of the quieter statements the show has made may be flying slightly under the radar.

Dina (Lauren Ash) and Amy (America Ferrera) gave birth during the “Delivery Day” episode of the NBC comedy, but rather than have the women instantly snap back to their pre-baby bodies, they’re gradually working their way to it. (Ferrera gave birth off-screen in real-life; Ash was not pregnant.)

“I went to our amazing wardrobe designer [Alix Hester] and said, ‘I don’t want to go back to nothing. I’ve been in a pregnancy belly forever, and I’m sick of it, but I don’t just want it all of a sudden to be gone,’” Ash recalls. “So we actually kind of did a fade out. We had a series of bellies.”

“I watched TV as a kid, and you’d see people have babies and they’d immediately be back to normal,” she continues. “I just feel passionate we need a fade out. And America did the same thing as well. I’m so excited we’re on a show where it wasn’t even a discussion or a thing. It was like, yeah, absolutely. America [is] a new mom. I don’t feel right feeding into [the post-childbirth narrative of], ‘And then your body is right back to what it was before!’”

Though Dina’s pregnancy was a surrogacy—for Glenn (Mark McKinney) and Jerusha (Kerri Kenney)—she has been changed by the experience.

“I really loved the moment in the [‘Delivery Day’] episode where Dina is about to go in for the surgery and she asks Glenn not to leave,” Ash admits. “There were so many layers when we shot that, and the different levels they wanted to get options for. They know each other really well. They’ve worked together for 15,16 years. And she’s done this thing for him. And whether you want this thing to have brought them closer together or not, obviously it has. And I thought that was a really beautiful moment.”

“I think what’s fun moving forward is she still has the ball in the air that she thinks Glenn is incompetent,” she continues with a laugh. “There’s little moments where she’s like, ‘This guy is the worst,’ but then they’ll have a moment where they relate about something…it’s nice. It also wouldn’t be realistic for her to be like, ‘He’s the greatest!’ There’s a nice balance of her rolling her eyes, and [acknowledging] we went through this thing together.”

And that’s amplified when Glenn brings his newborn to Cloud 9. “We definitely do see the baby in the store; there’s definite interaction between Dina and the baby,” Ash teases. “There’s a lot of fun episodes coming. I love the super funny stuff, but I love the stuff that has a lot of heart—and we have a lot of that coming up.”

SUPERSTORE, Thursdays, 8/7c, NBC

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