Barbara Eden Turned Down I Dreamed of Jeannie Because She Was Pregnant

Barbara Eden almost didn’t bring I Dream of Jeannie to life.

The actress, 91, appeared on the June 19 episode of I Choose Me with Jennie Garth. Eden and Garth, 53, costarred on the 1989 TV series Brand New Life, which Garth noted in her previous episode with Eden was her first acting job.

During the June 19 episode, the 90210 star asked Eden about wearing the iconic Jeannie costume, which featured pink and red pants, a matching bralette, headpiece and short jacket, leaving her navel exposed (but crucially not her belly button). Eden said she liked wearing the costume and “never” felt objectified.

But there was one major issue. “The first year of Jeannie, I was pregnant,” she told Garth. She and her husband Michael Ansara “had tried to have a baby for so long,” she remembered. “Finally, I was pregnant. And I found out the same day that they told me that Jeannie was going to go on the air.”

She called creator Sidney Sheldon and said, “I have to talk to you. I really have to talk to you in person.” She met him where he was at dinner, and even though she had uncertain news about Jeannie, she was “so happy.”

“I was happy about the show too, but more happy that I was pregnant,” she said. “I sat down there with a big grin on my face and said, ‘You know, I’m pregnant, and I can’t do your show.’ ” Still, she said, “I couldn’t keep the smile off my face.”

She told him, “I just had to let you know so you could recast it.” But Sheldon told her to give it a couple days so they could “see if we can work this out.” They decided to go forward with Eden as Jeannie, but would creatively hide her pregnancy.

But it wasn’t always easy. “I remember one time on the set, I came into work, and there was a bikini,” she remembered. “I looked at it, and I said, ‘I can’t wear that.’ ”

The costumer went and told director Gene Nelson that Eden couldn’t wear the bathing suit. “And Gene, who happened to have been a very good friend of mine at the time, walked up to my dressing room and said, ‘Barbara, you’re never a diva. Why don’t you put on the bathing suit?’ ”

“I said, ‘Gene, I am pregnant,’ ” she remembered. She agreed to put on the bathing suit, but not in front of the crew. 

“I put it on, and Gene came to the door, and he went, ‘Uh-oh. Oh, I see what you mean. I see what you mean,’ ” she remembered. So, “they put a tire on my tummy,” Eden remembered as the solution, with towels on top of the tire to hide what it was.

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Garth said that similarly, she was cast on the sitcom What I Like About You and got pregnant shortly after the pilot. She remembered they went to “great lengths” to hide her bump.

Eden said that I Dream of Jeannie mostly used “lots of material” in front of her to hide her bump.

I Dream of Jeannie ultimately ran from 1965 to 1970. Eden gave birth to her son Matthew Ansara in August 1965.