‘People Make Up Worse Things’: Tracee Ellis Ross Has the Perfect Response for Internet Trolls After a Wild Rumor Spirals Out of Control
Tracee Ellis is doing some explaining after a burner account with 15,000 followers sent the entire internet into a frenzy over a wild claim.
The “Black-ish” actress has spent years making it clear she answers to nobody — certainly not a due date.
Ross was forced to shut down yet another viral rumor after decades of fielding unsolicited questions about her dating life.
Ross leads what some would describe as an unorthodox life as a 53-year-old single woman with no kids.
She recently appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on June 23 to talk about her Broadway debut in “Every Brilliant Thing.”
But instead, she used the moment to clear up something everyone’s been talking about online.
“I don’t have social media on my phone right now, and I kept getting texts, and people were like, ‘Congratulations.’ I’m like, ‘On the play? Thank you!’” Ross told host Jimmy Fallon.
“Well, apparently, it’s swirling around, and it seems that people think I’m pregnant. Which is hilarious. I am not pregnant.”
The “Girlfriends” star wasn’t done.
With the comic timing that has made her one of the most watchable women on television, Ross also clarified that she’s unfamiliar with a very specific version of conception — the internet kind.
“I don’t know how you get the preggers,” she said, laughing. “Now, ‘the pregnant’ I think is different from just pregnant. I know how you get pregnant. But ‘the pregnant’ is a thing they make up online when it’s obviously a slow news day.”
It was, in fact, a very slow news day when X account @sa10nee — boasting a modest 15,000 followers — published a striking post.
The account claimed Ross had announced on her Instagram Story that she was pregnant via an anonymous sperm donor, preferring to raise the child alone.
53-year-old actress Tracee Ellis Ross, the daughter of Diana Ross, has taken to her Instagram story to announce that she’s officially pregnant, which will be her first child.
According to sources, she reportedly became pregnant through an anonymous sperm donor, as she didn’t… pic.twitter.com/zfKFQNeNGN
— SIR1
(@sa10nee) June 21, 2026
The post moved fast.
One X user spotted inconsistencies almost immediately: “This looks fake af. She’s been proudly child-free for years and hasn’t confirmed anything. Check her actual IG.”
They were right. The screenshot had been pulled from a fake account — @traceeeellisrosss, with a tell-tale extra “e” and “s” — not Ross’ verified page.
X’s “Readers Added Context” feature flagged it as a hoax. By then, the damage was done.
Reactions split cleanly down the middle as believers were enthusiastic, while others piled on with sarcasm.
“Wow, 53 and doing it solo by choice? Tracee is out here rewriting the rules. Mad respect!” one person wrote. “Clearblue really said it’s never too late. Congrats to Tracee!” quipped another.
A third added perhaps the most unintentionally cutting congratulations of the bunch: “Being 72 at your child’s graduation is a wild choice to be honest.”
After Ross set the record straight on national television, a different wave of commentary arrived.
“Sadly people make up worse things with social media these days,” one X user observed.
On YouTube, the responses ranged from blunt — “She’s close to 60, nobody was wondering if she was pregnant or not. FOH!” — to genuinely empathetic: “I believe you Tracee. It’s so sad that some phony account pretending to be you posted that false pregnancy story. Good luck with your Broadway show.”
For anyone paying attention to Ross over the last several years, the rumor read as almost willfully ignorant of who she is and what she has said, repeatedly and publicly, about her own life.
In a 2021 Marie Claire interview, she was direct about the path she hadn’t taken and the peace she’d made with it. “I used to put myself to sleep dreaming of my wedding,” she said. “And I would still love all of that, but what am I going to do, just sit around waiting? Shut up. I’ve got so many things to do.”
A year earlier, in Porter magazine, she went further: “I was raised by society to dream of my wedding, but I wish I had been dreaming of my life.”
On the question of happiness outside conventional timelines, she added: “There are so many ways to curate happiness, find love and create a family, and we don’t talk about them. It creates so much shame and judgment.”
The conversation has resurfaced in part through her Roku series, “Solo Traveling With Tracee Ellis Ross,” in which she takes on a label Oprah Winfrey assigned her during a 2020 interview — “the poster child for singledom.”
Ross, for the record, is not interested in the job. “I want to be the poster child for being an inhabitant in your own skin,” she said. “For living in your own skin.”
That much, at least, no fake Instagram account can take from her.
“Every Brilliant Thing” will premiere at the Hudson Theatre in New York City this summer.