From over the hills and far away comes news you might want to sit down for.
The actress who played the Sun Baby on the Teletubbies—who you will remember was, in fact, a baby at the time—is pregnant. That’s right, Jess Smith is expecting her first child with partner Ricky Latham.
Now in her late 20s, Jess shared the news on her social media, captioning the Oct. 11 post featuring her ultrasound image, “When two becomes three.”
And naturally, her comments were filled with congratulatory messages from fans feeling the nostalgia. “The Teletubbies sun baby is having her own sun baby,” wrote one user, while summed up everyone’s feeling with, “Sun baby having a baby…damn I’m old af….congratulations mate.”
Though Jess kept her identity as an infant TV star private for much of her life, she eventually shared the news in her late teens after years of seeing others claiming to be the beloved Sun Baby. In a 2014 Facebook message thanking her university friends for encouraging her to come forward, the then-19-year-old revealed how she landed the role as an infant.
When I was about 9 months old, my mum took me for a routine checkup at the local hospital,” Jess wrote per a screenshot she shared on Instagram in Nov. 2021, in which she reflected coming forward 7 years prior. “The midwife there has been contacted by a local production company who were looking for a smiley baby, and the midwife asked if my name could be submitted.”
She continued, “From the I had to go through auditions and short lists until they finally picked one person, ME!”
In the same post Jess, who is from the English county of Kent, revealed how they were able to capture the now-iconic shots of her laughing and looking in certain directions used in the show.
“While recording my dad held a teddy bear behind the camera to get me to laugh,” she explained. “And rolled a toy racing car to get me to look down at the camera, it obviously worked.”
