Keira Knightley Reveals She’s Pregnant With Her Second Child at a Party in Paris

At the end of last month, Keira Knightley was unveiled as one of the stars of Chanel’s new J12 watch campaign, one of the subjects of a new video series alongside Naomi Campbell, Lily-Rose Depp and her mom, Vanessa Paradis, Claudia Schiffer, Liu Wen, and several others. And at a cocktail party celebrating the collection in Paris Thursday night, just a few days later, Knightley had another big reveal lined up: She’s pregnant with her second child with husband James Righton.

Knightley appeared at the party, along with Righton, formerly of the British nü-rave band Klaxons, in a short-sleeved, empire-waisted Chanel dress in white and pinky-beige, her burgeoning bump on full display. (Last month, she appeared at another Chanel party in a loose-fitting ruffled gown, shrouding the bump.) Later in the evening, Righton and Knightley attended the Chanel Cruise 2020 show at the Grand Palais, longtime Chanel designer Virginie Viard’s first solo outing since the death of Karl Lagerfeld in February of this year. There, she sat in the front row in another empire-waisted gown, this one black with flutter cap sleeves and appliqué flowers, a v-neck and a delicate bow tied at her throat.

The couple’s first daughter, Edie, was born in 2015 and celebrates her fourth birthday next month; last year, Knightley published an essay as part of the collection Feminists Don’t Wear Pink (and Other Lies). In the essay, entitled “The Weaker Sex” and dedicated to her daughter, Knightley details the visceral, physical experience of giving birth: “My vagina split, you came out with your eyes open. Arms up in the air. Screaming. They put you on to me, covered in blood, vernix, your head misshapen from the birth canal. Pulsating, gasping, screaming,” she writes. She goes on to compare this to the manicured, public-facing impression women—like Kate Middleton, who gave birth around the same time as Knightley—are expected to present to the public. “Don’t show your battleground, Kate,” she writes, addressing the Duchess of Cambridge. “Don’t show. Don’t tell.” (Middleton has struggled with hyperemesis gravidarum during all three of her pregnancies, making this “battleground” seemingly even harder fought.)

Keira Knightley currently stars in the World War II-set period drama The Aftermath and will next appear in the ’70s pageant drama Misbehavior, opposite Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Suki Waterhouse, and Lesley Manville.