Who cares about Angelina anyway?

Watching the 2004 Golden Globes at home with her husband, Danielle Friedland casually started recounting all of the celebrity pregnancy gossip she knew. When her husband, surprised by the vast amount of knowledge she had of all things celebrity and baby, said “You should start a blog.” Danielle thought, “Oh God, does anyone else care about this but me?” The answer: a resounding yes.

Danielle, who traces her aspirations as a writer back to third grade when she created stories with vocabulary words, decided to kick off her blog during the Globes as her husband suggested. And The Celebrity Baby Blog was born. She started posting about the people she was watching and immediately started getting hits on her site.

Is the celebrity baby reporting business an escape? “Oh, definitely,” says Danielle who holds the title of Publisher. According to Danielle, people are generally really fascinated with both celebrities and pregnancy. The combination is, therefore, a home run. (What better proof than the media descending on a poor third world country most Americans had never heard of just because you-know-who was having their baby there?) So, is there an ulterior motive that people are so interested in pregnant celebrities? “People like to see celebrities get fat,” says Danielle. “There’s a blog about celebrity weight gain and loss because people are really interested in that.” Another reason? “It’s fun.”

So what are the biggest stories that viewers are most interested in? “Anything with Tom Cruise, anything with Angelina, Katie Holmes.” Even things that have nothing to do with a celebrity’s pregnancy get people excited. According to Danielle, when Tom Cruise told a reporter that Katie Holmes was going to be called Kate Holmes, Danielle received 30 or 40 posts about it – people arguing and debating the merits of how it all came to be and whether or not it was true. “People really get invested in the lives of these celebrities,” says Danielle. “People they don’t know at all.”

Who does Danielle like to track? “I’m really into Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger because I think Michelle Williams is so gorgeous; I also like Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck.” The most outlandish story she’s ever published? “What I’m really interested in is how people think Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ baby is not their own,” says Danielle. “A lot of people are convinced that there was a prosthetic she was wearing or that she was pregnant before they met or that it’s not his baby.” (i.e. people implying they had a sperm donor). “The baby could look exactly like Tom Cruise and people would say she was artificially inseminated.”

Since launching The Celebrity Baby Blog, Danielle has watched the number of viewers skyrocket to such an extent that she quit her job at Avon to devote more time to the site. What’s next? Look for editorial reviews in the fall and a redesign of the site. Our take? As long as celebrities get pregnant, The Celebrity Baby Blog will thrive. Visit The Celebrity Baby Blog at www.celebrity-babies.com

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