Sonja Bennett may have two small children with fellow Vancouver actor Stephen Lobo, but it’s the isolation of the childless that inspired Preggoland (opening Friday [May 1]), a comedy about a woman who fakes being pregnant to fit in with her friends.

In a call to the Straight, Bennett says the seed was planted when she noticed how drivers treated her as she jaywalked across Commercial Drive. “People would honk at me and give me dirty looks, but I’d do it anyway. And one time I stepped off the curb and all these cars just screeched to a halt. It was like the parting of the Red Sea,” she says.

Bennett realized she’d just started showing with her first pregnancy. “I looked in the cars and people were smiling. And that got me thinking about how people treat you when you’re pregnant, which is like a goddess. It’s so bizarre.”

She also questioned the new community she joined. “As an adult, I’ve had an awkward time making female friends. I never really know how to cross that threshold from acquaintance at the gym to going out for coffee,” Bennett says. “But when I got pregnant, I had this instant connection with all these mothers on a topic that’s bottomless. And I was interested in exploring that. Is it a real friendship or just convenience?”

Ultimately, Bennett embodies the flip side of this experience in the film. Ruth, the character Bennett wrote as a starring vehicle for herself once she noticed roles diminishing in her 30s, feels left out as her friends bond over motherhood. Though Bennett wants audiences to consider how lonely that can be for childless women, it wasn’t until she made Ruth a less sympathetic character that the screenplay came alive.

“In my first draft, Ruth was a wallflower. And I got notes from people saying that all the other characters were unlikable. The women were bitches, why would they dump her, she was so nice. So I tried making the other characters nicer but then there was no conflict.”

Finally, someone suggested her main character was the problem. So Bennett refashioned Ruth as a stunted party girl with a knack for alienating people. “Suddenly, all the other characters made sense because they had a reason to dump her,” she says with a laugh.

The script got attention in Hollywood—and more notes. “Basically, they wanted me to pull back on everything that was edgy. Like, Ruth can’t hit the kid with the baseball bat. Can she almost hit the kid with the baseball bat?” Bennett also quickly realized she wasn’t going to get to star in her own film. “I’d even toyed with the idea that maybe if they got a big star to play Ruth, I’d play Ruth’s sister. And it looked like that was not even likely.”

Bennett hiked the script back to Canada after getting one final note. “The L.A. story editor was really pushing for Ruth to be pregnant in the coda. And I’m very flexible, but that’s the only thing I said no to. The message is not ‘When you grow up and you’re female, that means you want children.’ ”