Exclusive! Good Luck Charlie’s Leigh-Allyn Baker

ForKidsEntertainment got the scoop from Leigh-Allyn Baker, a.k.a. Amy Duncan, on what to expect, um, while she’s expecting on this season of one of my kids’ favorite shows, Good Luck Charlie. Plus! Watch a sneak peek clip!

Just like her character Amy Duncan on Disney Channel’s Good Luck Charlie, Leigh-Allyn Baker has a baby in the oven in real life, and when it comes to the kitchen, the similarities don’t stop there.

“I make chicken one way,” the actress shared. “And that’ s about it. I make really good chicken and I fool a lot of people… I have them over, I make my nice chicken… a couple side vegetables with it and everyone thinks I can cook. But no… I cook about like Amy Duncan [laughs].”

Good Luck Charlie will start season three with a wee one on the way this Sunday. As the Duncan’s prep for baby number FIVE (sound familiar, ahem?), back to back episodes kicking off on May 6 are sure to be filled with lots of laughs. My three “big kids” love this show and are, um, familiar with a new addition or two to the family. Fortunately for Leigh-Allyn, her character’s life coincided with her own family plans.

“If Amy can do it again, I can do it surely,” she laughed. “It was time to decide if we wanted a second one or not and I wanted to plan it where I was able to deliver when we were finished with the third season so I could hopefully enjoy a few months with the baby and then go back to work. Or, at least I could enjoy my last season of Good Luck Charlie if they don’t pick it up again.”

With her experience mirroring her character’s she definitely had some realistic feedback to offer.

“I’ve suggested a few things to them… it’s interesting, most of the writers on the show are men. So they have one idea of pregnancy and I have another [laughs]. Sometimes we butt heads on what a real pregnancy is like. Of course their perspective is as the father and what they watched their wife go through. My perspective is a real perspective because I’m actually going through it. We find a happy medium of that.”

As for examples she implemented into the show, she offered, “Eating. They kind of drop the ball on how women have the cravings. There would be certain scenes at certain times where I was thinking, if you aren’t going to write an episode about it, by golly, I’m just going to walk into every scene of this episode eating something.”

Being a working mother with “pregnancy brain” presented some challenges along the way.

“Okay… The first three months – I’m not going to lie – were very difficult. They would try and nit pick me on words on a line and I would say ‘you guys don’t know how lucky you are that I remembered where I work, let alone my lines [laughs].’”

As with many moms, her character Amy finds it difficult to return to work and decides to take time off.

“We just did the episode where she decides she just can’t go back to work, she misses the kids too much and wants to be at home. And then there will be an episode where I decide to volunteer as a nurse at Gabe’s school which of course humiliates Gabe as much as he can possibly be humiliated. And that’s when she ventures into this mommy blog.”

MOMMY BLOG?!!!

“I think that’s going to be fun. I can’t reveal too much about it yet, other than it takes her some trial and error to get to that point — I’m curios to see how they are going to get her there.”

And what can we expect this season?

“Lots of excting things,” she teases. “This new baby comes along and really turns the house upside down. Everyone you know and love… even though they’re the same person, they’re changed. There’s a new body in the house and everyone has to adapt. It’s interesting how the characters do react and I think everyone will be surprised.”

Which of course makes us wonder about the titular character, Charlie, and how she will feel now that she’s not the baby.

“They do have some realllly funny story lines going on with Charlie and how she’s getting used to that baby… or not getting used to that baby I should say,” she laughs.

Though Leigh-Allyn was pregnant with her second child while shooting this third season, she waited for just the right time to tell her castmates.

“When we did the ‘Special Delivery’ episode, right when I’m introducing the baby to the whole family, I told everyone on camera that I was pregnant. That’s how I told everyone. You should have seen Eric Kramer’s face. .. it’s like, ‘What are you talking about? I thought you would have told me about that [laughs]!’”

Catch all the action this season starting with the premier of Good Luck Charlie on Sunday, May 6!

*photos courtesy of Disney