“Dexter: New Blood” actress Jamie Chung admitted to choosing to have children via surrogacy because she feared getting pregnant could ruin her Hollywood career.
The 39-year-old “Real World: San Diego” alum made her motivations clear during an interview with Today Chung recently welcomed twin boys along with her husband Bryan Greenberg. The couple has been married since 2015.
“I was terrified of becoming pregnant. I was terrified of putting my life on hold for two-plus years. In my industry, it feels like you’re easily forgotten if you don’t work within the next month of your last job. Things are so quickly paced in what we do,” Chung told the publication during a phone interview. “So it’s a compromise that we made together as a couple.”
The “Big Hero Six” star went public with her decision to freeze her eggs in 2019 but said there’s more stigma associated with surrogacy, so she was hesitant to share about it.
“I think there’s a little bit of shame. It’s still not a very common thing and we weren’t ready for judgment,” she told Today. “We really just did it to protect ourselves. We announced things when we were ready to.”
“People probably think, ‘Oh, she’s so vain. She didn’t want to get pregnant,’ and it’s much more complicated than that,” the mom of two continued. “For me, personally, and I will leave it at this, it’s like, I worked my ass off my entire life to get where I am. I don’t want to lose opportunities. I don’t want to be resentful.”
Chung got her start in reality television in 2004 when she was cast on “The Real World.” Her first major role as an actress was in the 2008 ABC Family miniseries “Samurai Girl.” Since then, Chung worked on projects including “Dragonball Evolution,” “Grown Ups,” “Premium Rush,” “Sorority Row,” “The Hangover Part II,” “Sucker Punch,” and a recurring role on “Lovecraft Country.” She recently finished filming “Reunion” with Jillian Bell and Chace Crawford.
The actress shared during a Facebook Live in December 2021 that she was experiencing postpartum depression. While the condition is most commonly associated with pregnancy-related hormones, medical experts recently changed the definition to include “multiple factors,” including premature birth and NICU stays, which the actress said factored in for her, per Today.
“Therapy really helped me prep mentally for this lifestyle change,” Chung said during an interview with People at the time. “You don’t want to start with something negative or challenging, but I do think that these postpartum depression issues are so real.”