All The Details About Morena Baccarin And Ben McKenzie's Eyebrow-Raising Marriage

"Homeland" star Morena Baccarin and "Southland" star Ben McKenzie were at very different places in their lives right before they joined that ever-growing group of actors who fell for their on-screen love interests. But what they had in common was their small-screen success. Baccarin's breakout role came in "Firefly," which aired from 2002 to 2003. As her work on the cult sci-fi series was winding down, McKenzie was just beginning to establish himself as one of the 2000s' biggest heartthrobs on the primetime soap "The O.C." 

Years after the show ended, one of McKenzie's fellow "The O.C." cast members, Mischa Barton, revealed that she dated McKenzie when she was 17 and he was 25. During a 2025 appearance on "Call Her Daddy," Barton said of their problematic age gap, "The producers went to my parents. ... It was kind of a whole ordeal." While McKenzie was also spotted looking cozy with Emily VanCamp in 2004, he managed to keep any serious relationships under the radar, and he told Glamour in 2014 that he was single and hoping to find love with someone who wasn't in his line of work. "You'd like to meet people outside the context of 'this' so it's a delicate thing. But ... I get paid to interact with beautiful women all the time," he said.

One of those beautiful women was Baccarin, who married director Austin Chick in 2011. While McKenzie was sparking rumors that he was dating Shelley Hennig by stepping out with the "Teen Wolf" star in 2013, Baccarin was pregnant and preparing to attend the Emmys as a nominee. Just two years later, her professional and personal lives would collide after she started working with McKenzie.

Many years before she and Ben McKenzie coupled up, Morena Baccarin made a guest appearance on "The O.C." as an ex of Jeff Hephner's character, Matt Ramsay. She had already gained some notoriety for her role as Inara Serra in "Firefly" when she shot her 2006 episodes, which didn't call for her to act alongside McKenzie, but apparently, he was not a "Firefly" fan. In an interview with Reel Talker, Baccarin recalled how he reacted when she tried to introduce herself outside his trailer. "He will deny this to his dying day, but he blew me off," she said.

While Baccarin hasn't forgotten what McKenzie was wearing that day — a white tank top — he didn't remember that encounter at all when she brought it up years later. However, McKenzie did recall his reaction to Baccarin describing his behavior to him years later. "I'm thinking, 'What kind of idiot would blow off this beautiful, gorgeous, sophisticated, intelligent, successful woman?'" he confessed on "The Late Late Show" in 2017. When Baccarin appeared on the same show the following year, host James Corden naturally had to ask her to share her side of the story, and she quipped, "He missed me in my prime. He could have had all of this a lot sooner."

Despite appearing on "The O.C.," Baccarin admitted to Page Six in 2026, "I wasn't a huge fan." Perhaps the first impression McKenzie left on her had something to do with that.

On "The Late Late Show," Ben Mackenzie said he and Morena Baccarin had that awkward conversation about their "O.C." encounter a few days after they started working together on "Gotham." On the series, which premiered in 2014, they portrayed Gotham City Police Department Detective Jim Gordon and Dr. Leslie "Lee" Thompkins, who becomes the department's medical examiner after her relationship with Gordon goes from professional to romantic. Mackenzie also revealed that Baccarin left far more of an impression on him after they had their first conversation on the "Gotham" set. When she showed up at his trailer for the second time, he didn't blow her off.

The meeting took place in October 2014 on a dreary day. "I got a knock on the door, and I opened it up, and she's standing there in the rain," McKenzie recalled on the "Inside of You" podcast in 2020. "And normally you would think, like, 'Oh, romantic,' but instead, it was just this drenched rain. She looked like something was wrong." After some coaxing, he got his new co-star to tell him why she seemed so upset: She was missing her son's first birthday to be at work. "It was just a very human moment. ... She was actually in deep discomfort but sucking it up to do a job, which I thought was both sort of tragic but also commendable," he said.

According to Austin Chick, he and Morena Baccarin split because she cheated on him with Ben McKenzie. Chick filed for divorce from Baccarin in June 2015, almost four months before their son, Julius, celebrated his second birthday. In legal documents obtained by TMZ, Chick contended that he and Baccarin were still very much a couple when she and Ben McKenzie conceived a child together that June. However, Baccarin insisted that she and Chick had started discussing divorce that March.

Chick didn't like how quickly McKenzie became a part of Julius' life. Recalling an August 2015 encounter with the actor at the home he used to share with Baccarin, he wrote in legal filings, "[McKenzie] had just taken a shower and he was playing with my son." A source also told Entertainment Tonight that someone sent Chick a picture of McKenzie and Baccarin spending time together while she was in Vancouver for her role in "Deadpool," which shot from March through May 2015. "Austin confronted Morena about the photo. She didn't deny it and said she no longer wanted to work on [their] marriage," said the insider.

Chick and Baccarin's ensuing custody battle was long and messy. They fought over where Julius and Chick would live while Baccarin was shooting "Gotham" in New York, with E! News reporting that Chick decided to back out of an agreement to reside in the city at Baccarin's expense after he learned about her relationship with McKenzie. Instead, he wanted to remain in Los Angeles. It took the exes until 2018 to hash out a custody agreement. By then, Baccarin and McKenzie had tied the knot.

Morena Baccarin and Ben McKenzie were both busy filming when they began preparing to welcome their first child together. Luckily, the timing worked out — when Baccarin told the "Gotham" team she was expecting, they informed her that they had already planned for her character to get pregnant on the show. "It was a total coincidence. ... It worked out perfectly," she told People in 2016. Still, the wardrobe department did have to work its magic to diminish the appearance of her burgeoning bump. "I was a little bit further along than the character at first," she explained, "so you'll see me in a lot of jackets." She also revealed that McKenzie was being a doting dad-to-be by making sure that she stayed well-hydrated at work. "Ben's the sweetest," she gushed.

Just days before he became a first-time father, McKenzie appeared on "Today" and admitted, "It's a little terrifying, but it's very exciting. Every day I leave the house when I go to work, and I just say, 'No baby today, no baby today; just wait for the weekend.'" He didn't get his wish. He and Baccarin celebrated the birth of their daughter, Frances Laiz Setta Schenkkan, right smack dab in the middle of the week on Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Setta is the maiden name of Baccarin's mother; Schenkkan is McKenzie's birth surname; and Frances is his mother's name. "We call her Frankie. She's 7 months old, and the cutest thing in the world," McKenzie gushed during an October 2016 appearance on "Harry."

In November 2016, Morena Baccarin attended the Gotham Independent Film Awards wearing an accessory Catwoman would love to get her claws on: an engagement ring with a huge diamond. Her plan to marry Ben McKenzie had already been spoiled in a rather invasive way, thanks to TMZ publishing the contents of legal filings from her divorce in 2015. In one document, Baccarin wrote, "Today, I am in a new committed relationship. I am planning to re-marry. Also, I am 3 1/2 months pregnant."

The couple got married in 2017 on June 2, which is also Baccarin's birthday. However, they weren't purposely trying to sync their anniversary with that date. On "Harry," McKenzie explained that it was simply the only unbooked date to rent their dream wedding venue within the time frame they had decided on. "It is sweet — or so I thought," he said. "Half of her loves that, and half of her, I think, just wants me to be clear that she is going to get a birthday present, and there's going to be an anniversary gift." He then joked that he would be in double the trouble with his wife if he ever forgot to spoil her on the date.

The venue he and Baccarin chose was the Botanic Gardens in Brooklyn, which holds a special significance for the pair: On "Gotham," it's where their characters got engaged. "We'd looked at a few places, but this was just so beautiful," Baccarin told the New York Post. "They have this Art Deco, glass Palm House that overlooks a lily pond."

When he was preparing to become a first-time dad in 2016, Ben McKenzie told People, "It's exciting and it's something that I've wanted for a long time. I'm very happy about all of it. Poop, diapers and everything. It'll be fun." Little did he know that he would be the one wearing the diapers someday — and that he'd be happy to do it.

In March 2019, Morena Baccarin posted a photo on Instagram of herself and McKenzie posing together with pacifiers in their mouths while wearing diapers over their pants. In the caption, she explained the reason for their very juvenile ensembles. "When I asked my daughter what she wanted the theme of her birthday party to be this year she said Babies!" she wrote. "This is what I get for asking an almost three year old."

Unfortunately for the parents, their looks did not impress the young party guests of their toddler daughter, Frances. On "Jimmy Kimmel Live," McKenzie recalled what happened when he met them at the door in his diaper. "The kids freaked out. ... They were terrified," he said. He also revealed that he was the one who was tasked with buying the nightmare-inducing nappies, telling Jimmy Kimmel of his shopping trip attire, "I wore a baseball hat."

Some celebrities break up and continue working together, but Morena Baccarin and Ben McKenzie's love story outlasted "Gotham." Their characters did, however, get their own happy ending. In one of the show's final episodes, which aired in 2019, Dr. Lee Thompkins and Jim Gordon tied the knot inside the Gotham Police Department building. It was a special moment for the actors, who had played the couple for half a decade. "All of the cast was there, either in character or not, including our [GCPD] background extras. ... They're family too," Ben McKenzie told TV Insider of his second wedding with Baccarin.

It wasn't exactly the botanical garden where the couple got hitched in real life, but the interior of the dimly lit GCPD building, which usually had a somewhat gloomy vibe, had been spruced up with some flowers. The "Gotham" wedding was officiated by Gordon's partner, Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue). "If there's one beautiful thing that's happened over these last few crazy years, it's that these two people met each other," he told the couple's guests. If that sounds like something McKenzie himself might have said about his relationship with Baccarin, well, he did write the episode. While discussing Bullock's speech during a 2022 appearance on "The Drew Barrymore Show," Baccarin got emotional. "[It] was very personal to us and had moments that really resonated with our personal life," she said.

While it wasn't the final scene "Gotham" viewers saw, the wedding was the last one that the cast filmed. "It's really grounding to work with your family, actually, and it was a very sweet moment," Baccarin said during a 2019 BUILD Series interview. "It was nice to end the show on that note."

When she appeared virtually on "The Talk" during the pandemic in December 2020, Morena Baccarin talked about how going on dates had changed for her and Ben McKenzie. They'd been quarantining with their kids, so all they could really do was go out for walks together for a little alone time. "It has inspired a lot of anxiety in the kids because we're around all the time," she said. To make Julius and Frances feel better about their occasional absences, the parents devised a way to make the outings more of a family affair — without inviting the kids to tag along. Baccarin revealed that McKenzie told Frances she could help him get beautified for their dates, which resulted in the above image. "I don't think he was expecting the blue nail polish and the bracelets and everything," she quipped.

Host Carrie Ann Inaba then complimented Baccarin, saying, "You are so glowing and radiant." She had a mischievous little twinkle in her eye and was seemingly privy to some information that viewers didn't yet know, which was revealed when Baccarin slowly got out of her chair to show off a baby bump. "I think that date was pretty successful," she joked.

Baccarin and McKenzie later joined the list of celebrities who welcomed babies in 2021, which included other power couples such as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost. When Baccarin shared a photo of their newborn son on Instagram that March, she captioned it, "2021 is looking up. Welcome to the world Arthur. Trust us, you haven't missed much yet."

While Ben McKenzie and Morena Baccarin fell in love while filming "Gotham," it wasn't always sunshine and roses at work — or at home. In a 2019 interview for the DC blog, McKenzie said of his experience writing for the show, "My wife is hard to write for because she's very demanding. If I write her the wrong lines, it's a tough night in the household. She's tricky!" According to Baccarin, she took that same attitude with her to work. "When he tries to give me notes on set, I tell him, 'You know, you're not gonna really do that, right?'" she said in a 2018 People interview. "He knows who's boss."

Things can also get a little weird when an actor in a relationship has to simulate intimacy with another actor for work, as McKenzie discovered when he and Baccarin attended the "Deadpool" premiere. They managed to power through watching her very raunchy early scenes with Ryan Reynolds, but it was so awkward that they left. After recounting the experience on "Andy Cohen Live," McKenzie said, "It's not like there's no jealousy or sensitivity ... but I can't give her grief; she can't give me grief."

Baccarin's "Deadpool" fame later affected McKenzie in another way. "They think that their mom is cool because she's in movies, but they're not aware of my work," he said of his kids on the "Welcome to the O.C., B***hes" podcast in 2023. His solution was to start rewatching "The O.C." with his then-7-year-old daughter, who, unlike her mother, became an instant fan of the show. "She's ready to go to the next episode as soon as it's over, which again, is terrible parenting," he said.

If Ben McKenzie and Morena Baccarin had discussions about working together again someday after filming wrapped on "Gotham," perhaps some of the possibilities they considered were a cute rom-com or a gripping horror movie in the same vein as "A Quiet Place," which stars another happily married celebrity couple, John Krasinski and Emily Blunt. But nope, the next project they teamed up for was something entirely different: a documentary warning viewers about the dangers of cryptocurrency titled "Everyone Is Lying to You for Money."

McKenzie, who has a degree in economics, scored interviews with some big names in the crypto industry, including convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried. Baccarin was also filmed begging him not to bug her "Greenland" co-star Gerard Butler about his crypto experience, which McKenzie did anyway. Of his wife's involvement with the documentary, McKenzie told Decider in a 2025 interview, "I love that the film shows how funny she is. She steals several scenes."

According to McKenzie, his passion for his anti-crypto crusade eventually became a bit too intense for his wife, who had grown tired of him talking about it all the time. In a November 2025 interview at the Mill Valley Film Festival, Baccarin admitted, "From the inception of this film, I thought he was absolutely insane to do it." However, she was still supportive, not only appearing in the movie but also allowing a camera crew to film their family at home. And she was thrilled to see McKenzie's vision brought to fruition. "Everyone Is Lying to You for Money made its debut at SXSW London," she wrote in the caption of a June 2025 Instagram post, "and I couldn't be prouder to witness it."