Francia Raisa & Ken Baumann: 'Secret Life' Loss Q&A

Francia Raisa and Ken Baumann are about to go through something we haven’t really seen on television — especially with young adults.

The two Secret Life of the American Teenager stars sat down with press to chat about Adrian and Ben losing their child at the bitter end of Adrian’s pregnancy and opened up about the hardship of it all. Check it:

How does this loss affect both Adrian and Ben?
Francia Raisa: Adrian was really just all about having this baby. Her whole life revolved around it right now. She’s had a baby shower, she is getting married, she is starting a new life, and then for all that to be just be crashing down and I mean, there’s no baby now, so, it really affects her. It affected me as well to shoot the episode. It’s something that I’d hope never to witness again.

Ken Baumann: It was rough. It’s a material that as actors we feel very lucky to take on because it is such a challenge, and represents an experience that you don’t often see on TV. So you feel lucky to be able to portray that, and give those people, who had the unfortunate experience, give them some representation, make them feel like they’re thought of, too. But at the same time, it takes an emotional toll on you. You’ve been just living in that situation for a short amount of time, it’s rough, it’s terrible. Nobody wants that to happen. So, yes, it was both strenuous and really pretty incredible opportunity. Ben was devastated as anyone would be, and he’s going to have to struggle for quite a long time to recover.

(Click inside for more of Francia and Ken‘s Q&A…)

Will Adrian go back to being a loner?
FR: Adrian was carrying the baby for nine months and she really felt emotionally attached to it. Like I said, her whole personality and her whole character changed into this welcoming person, and she felt blessed that everything was coming together in her life: her family; her friendships; educations; and then it all just came crashing down.

So she becomes very angry and bitter, and she just wants to be left alone, and handle her own sorrows. Even if people try to come and try to be there for her, she just wants to be left alone. She just becomes, I guess, some sort of a loner again, and doesn’t really want to accept anyone because all she wants to do is grieve about her baby.

How did you mentally prepare for this?
FR: I didn’t know what to do. I was trying to listen to some really depressing. music, and the best thing that I could have done is I went on YouTube and I typed in stillbirth and there was a few videos that popped up, and there was one in particular, I think it’s the first one that comes up when you research it, and it’s about a couple who actually went through what my character goes through.

You see the woman pregnant and how happy they are and the whole process of waiting for her to be born, and then you see them hold their dead child and you see her in a coffin and you see pictures of her, and you just see the whole family just crying and grieving. So, yes, that sold me, and that’s how I prepared for it, and the song that they added in the video I had on my iPod and I just listened to it over and over again. The flashbacks of that baby just sticks and came back into my head every time they called action.

Since this loss happened, will Ben retreat from Adrian and go after Amy again?
KB: I think that desire is going to show up in these upcoming episodes. Again, when I first read the script, the script for June 6th, I thought, I started to think what possibly would be Ben’s future, and I had guessed that that would occur. It pops up in a really interesting ways.

In the following episodes, he is stuck in the situation and he is kind of brought down by grief, too, so there’s nothing; he doesn’t really have any sort of impetus to move away from Adrian. He realizes, too, that, at least immediately after they lose baby that, he’s not going anywhere. He’s got to be responsible, and he really doesn’t have the energy to do anything else. But after that, once he starts to recover, yes, there’s certainly that draw, like I said, to go back and kind of relive the past or try to and fail.

What will happen with the dynamic of Adrian and Ben with Amy and Ricky?
KB: Well, regardless at the very beginning before this event, it’s a pretty tricky situation, but I would say that it both kind of settles any disputes or conflicts they have just temporarily because everyone kind of bonds together in grief, paradoxically enough. But at the same time, once Adrian and Ben are trying to recover, it gets pretty nasty.

And naturally, you’re going to have two people who are stricken by grief, and they’re going to look to make themselves feel better, and that may involve trying to reach back into the past, and go back to how it was once was, and reignite old loves and all that stuff. So, it gets even more convoluted, but temporarily, like I said, everybody comes together in this tragic event, which is very, very painful and bittersweet.

“Or Not To Be…” premieres TONIGHT @ 8PM ET/PT on ABC Family.