Hiring Penelope Cruz to play a female pirate and foil for Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides was a brilliant bit of casting. I doubt we’re going to miss either Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, both of whom were always better suited to standing around and looking pretty than trading barbs with Captain Jack.
Disney has released a new featurette which gives us a closer look at the relationship between Cruz’s character Angelica and the always unsteady Jack Sparrow. Watch it for that, or watch it to see if you can figure out how they manage to hide the fact that Cruz was really pregnant during much of the shooting. Here you go…
See any sign of Penelope’s baby bump? In the wide shots they used Penelope’s sister as her body double and while most of the close shots all seep to be shot from the shoulders up, there are at least a couple of zoomed in frames featuring Penelope’s belly, usually in some sort of corset. How did they make this work, for example:
That one seems like a clear cut case of creative costuming, the way the lines of the costume work it's clearly trying to hide the fact that she has a belly. This one had to be a lot harder to pull off though:
In that view of her costume she looks completely skinny. Did they film it early on before she started showing? Nope, it’s just a case of perspective. Look at this shot, of the same costume, in the same scene, shown from the side:
Squint a little and you can see there’s a stomach there that they’re trying to hide with the coat.
Play another round of find the baby with this new Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides TV spot.
