Emily Procter and her partner, music producer Paul Bryan, are squinting intently at the perfect face of their baby daughter, Philippa Frances. It’s not just that the couple is infatuated with tiny Pippa, as she’s known. They’re also trying to answer the question that always preoccupies new parents: Whom does she look like?
“Paul and I were both redheads when we were born,” says Procter, as the little brunette stares back, looking a bit bemused herself. “She doesn’t really resemble either of us.”
The question resonates more deeply for the CSI: Miami star than it does for many new moms: Adopted as an infant, Procter, 42, has never met her biological parents. All she knows of them is that her birth mother was quite young and in a relationship with the biological father when Emily was born.
Between Pippa’s nursing times, Procter settles in for a chat on the poolside patio of her home in Santa Monica, Calif. Sleep-deprived but relaxed in a blue knit tunic, black leggings, and clogs (a departure from her signature four-inch heels), she opens up about how her own adoption, her parents’ unusual divorce, and the birth of her baby have molded her view of what makes a family.
I’ve always known I was adopted. In fact, my mother loves to tell the story of how a woman stopped us at the store one day when I was 3 or 4, looked at me, and said, “Oh, how precious! I’d love to have one just like her.”
“Well,” I replied with a sweet smile, “you can get one from the children’s home!” My mom just about died laughing.
As comfortable as I was with my adoption, the nature-versus-nurture question has been a big one for me. I adore my parents, but I always wondered if I would feel a different kind of love— not more or less, just different—for someone who was biologically related. I couldn’t wait to look at someone who shared my genes. I thought my baby was going to provide a decoder key to my past. But then I looked at Pippa and realized, no, she’s actually the key to my future.
I’ve long felt that it doesn’t matter how your babies come to you, just that you have each other. My mother, Barbara, who’s a homemaker, tried to get pregnant. for seven years before she and my dad adopted my brother, Whit. Three years later they went back on the adoption list and got me. And my dad, William, who’s a doctor, comes from a generations-old American family whose roots go way back in North Carolina. So it was interesting to grow up surrounded by all that history and tradition when my own genealogical line is basically blank. I’m the new link. Somehow it makes the world seem very intimate.
When I was 3, my parents got a divorce. They had been together a long time, and I think they just looked at each other and thought, “Gosh, we’re really different people.” It was the 1970s, and they did a couple of things that were quite open-minded: They stayed close, living just 10 minutes away from each other, and they hired a child therapist for my brother and me. I was so little, I remember thinking, “Oh, the lady with the puppets is coming over, and she’s gonna ask me if I’m mad. How can I be mad when she has puppets?” I really admire my parents for making their split so effortless for me and my brother.
When they each remarried, bringing stepparents and three stepsisters into the equation, we all traveled in a pack. There were folks in town who couldn’t work out who was my stepmother and who was my mother. At any big family function—holidays, a graduation, a birthday—there were four parents and up to five kids. I’m the youngest. Hence, the acting!
Now, I love my job, but work had somehow gotten in the way of having children. Also, I had a boyfriend from home for 15 years, and we never ended up together because neither of us wanted to move. Then a little over three years ago, a friend, the singer Aimee Mann, introduced me to Paul. On our first date, I told him, “You should know that I’m thinking of having a family.” His reaction was, “That’s awesome.” (Later, he sent me a pair of sparkly Christian Louboutin heels that I’d told him reminded me of shoes I loved as a child, and that was it. I was there!)
Getting pregnant wasn’t easy, and I found that devastating. I really beat myself up for waiting so long when I’d always wanted children and family had been the basis of my happiness my whole life. We did IUI (intrauterine insemination) and two rounds of IVF (in vitro fertilization), and nothing worked. We considered adoption, but the process takes so long. In the end, we gave up on the treatments, and the very next month, I got pregnant naturally.
Everyone at CSI: Miami was really great about accommodating me. The scripts were written so that my character, Detective Calleigh Duquesne, was always in the lab, where they could hide my belly. Pippa made her entrance with great timing on Dec. 8, right at the beginning of the show’s holiday break. She was in the breech position, with both feet facing down, so the doctors opted for a C-section.
I went to the hospital hoping for an intimate delivery, but there were about 20 people in the room, because Cedars-Sinai is a teaching hospital, and all the students wanted to see the breech baby. Finally, Pippa arrived, a healthy 7 pounds, 9 ounces, and 19 inches.
I was laughing and very happy, and Paul was crying, which I think is sweet. When I saw her, she was so alert, I thought, “Gosh, are you 4?” My first words to her were, “Hey, hi. Well, you’re here.”
I have always thought about my birth mother and what she went through. In the hospital room, when the nurses asked, “Would you like us to take the baby?” I said, “No! I do not want you to take the baby from this room!” And I thought, “What if I had to say, ‘Yes, you can take her away—for good.’” I cannot imagine how brave and painful that would be, to make the choice to let someone else raise your baby if you couldn’t do it. It was the right choice in my case. And in a few years, once Pippa has settled in, I think we’ll probably adopt a child who’s over 5, because older children often don’t get considered for adoption.
My love for Pippa is overwhelming. But after all these years of wondering, the birth of my daughter has helped me see that the love I feel for her is the same love I feel for my mother or father or Paul. For me, family love is family love, no matter what.
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