Rihanna Unveils New Pregnancy in Super Bowl Halftime Show

Rihanna’s jacket zipped past her belly as she performed at Super Bowl LVII. [Source: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images]

Fans watching the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday wondered if Rihanna would bring out a special guest but no one thought it would be her unborn baby. Rihanna revealed on the nationally televised Super Bowl LVII halftime show in Glendale, Arizona that she is pregnant again. She is the first woman halftime show singer to perform while pregnant.

Rihanna hinted at her pregnancy during the performance by rubbing her stomach and zipping her jacket below the bump. One of her representatives confirmed the rumor to People Magazine.

Rihanna recently had her first son with rapper, A$AP Rocky last May. The decision to perform on a national stage with a newborn on the way had some concerns. Jin Park, a healthcare worker at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens, NY, told me, “It doesn’t seem like a good idea to play a big show when you’re newly a mother and pregnant again. Especially with the way the stage was set up, having her dance and sing on an elevating platform. I understand the attention it’ll bring her but it’s not a great look.” The stage set-up Park refers to includes Rihanna’s seven platforms hanging 60 feet in the air that she used at the beginning and end of her performance.

Nonetheless, the show benefitted Rihanna’s career that she had left for the last seven years. Her performance was watched by 118.7 million people, the second-most watched Super Bowl halftime show in history. Rihanna’s show had five million more viewers than the actual game. Since the performance, she became the most-streamed artist globally, eleven of her songs that she performed are in Spotify’s “Top 50 Daily” playlist, and she gained three million followers on Instagram.