There’s fabulous and then there’s announcing your pregnancy in a high-fashion photo shoot helmed by Sofia Coppola.
Kirsten Dunst falls firmly into the latter category with the actor revealing she’s expecting her second child with husband Jesse Plemons in a spread for W Magazine that’s practically dripping in glamour.
For the occasion, Dunst reunited with the auteur director, whom she’s collaborated with on films including The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette and most recently The Beguiled, alongside Coppola’s other muses, Elle Fanning and Rashida Jones, in a photo essay for the outlet’s Directors Issue.
In one of a handful of photos artfully captured by photographer Zoë Ghertner, Dunst appears sprawled on an ornate bed dressed in a custom, bridal-adjacent Rodarte gown with her hand accentuating her stomach.
The shoot recalls the same aesthetic as the pair’s highly stylised work on Marie Antoinette, which saw Dunst assume the role of the French queen with a modern twist ― shoutout to the infamous pair of blue Converse shoes.
Dunst has set the bar relatively high for pregnancy reveals, previously announcing that she was expecting her first child with Plemons by way of Rodarte’s Fall 2018 fashion lookbook.
The couple, who first met while portraying a married couple on the second season of Fargo, got engaged in January 2017 and welcomed their son, Ennis, a year later. While the two have yet to reveal the details of their wedding, W Magazine confirmed they are indeed married.
In the accompanying W Magazine interview, Dunst and Coppola trade anecdotes about the magic behind their decadeslong working relationship, including the time the director lent the young actor a John Galliano dress she wore to the Golden Globes for Dunst’s high school prom.
“It’s just so beautiful to have that kind of friendship where you’ve seen each other have children,” Dunst said of Coppola. “There are few collaborations, to be honest, where it lasts, where someone knows you that long that’s not your family.”
She went on to praise Coppola for fostering a safe environment on the set of their first film together, The Virgin Suicides, explaining that the director made her feel “really protected” as a teenager in the entertainment industry.
“She made me feel like I was cool, like my teeth were cool, and I was pretty. At 16, I did not think anything of myself,” Dunst recalled about her experience on the 1999 film. “It’s nice to have had another woman celebrate that transition, rather than it having been sexualised through a man’s perspective.”
While many of Dunst’s films, including her collaborations with Coppola, are considered modern-day classics, the actor has spoken out about her frustration over certain projects only garnering praise years after their release.
“I don’t know, maybe they just think I’m the girl from Bring It On,” she said in a 2019 interview. “Well, remember when Marie Antoinette — y’all panned it? And now you all love it. Remember Drop Dead Gorgeous? Panned. Now you all love it.”
“I know that all you have is your work at the end of the day. And that’s all people really care about. I’m intelligent enough to know that and have perspective,” she said, adding, “It’d be nice to be recognised by your peers.”