H20 Just Add Water star welcomes a baby boy: 'Besotted'
Cariba Heine has and her husband Matthew Pongrass have welcomed their first child together.
The H2O: Just Add Water star, 36, announced the exciting news on Wednesday on Instagram.
'Besotted with this baby boy,' she captioned an intimate black-and-white image of herself cradling the newborn.
Fans, friends, and her fellow Mako mermaids rushed to congratulate Cariba on the new addition to the family.
'Awwwww congrats!' Claire Holt, who starred as Emma Gilbert on H2O alongside Cariba, commented with a string of cute emojis.
'Our Rikki got a mini Rikki,' one excited fan commented, referencing Cariba's character in the Australian hit series, while another posted a humorous GIF of the character telling Phoebe Tonkin's Cleo "Sorry I don't do kids" in an early episode.
Cariba announced her pregnancy in December last year, a mere six months after she and her husband tied the knot in Tuscany, Italy.
The pair had been dating for some time before Matthew popped the question in 2022.
'Spoilt doesn't even cut it but pregnancy is HARD WORK. So I'll take it,' she wrote alongside a photo taken on holiday in her native Cape Town, South Africa.
Cariba is best known for her role as Rikki Chadwick in the kids mermaid TV series H2O: Just Add Water.
The beloved Channel Ten television series followed three teenagers — Emma, Cleo and Rikki — who transform into mermaids whenever they come into contact with water.
Her character on the show, which ran from 2006-2010, was a mermaid with special powers who was initially 'aloof and rebellious.'
Airing back in 2006 and running for three seasons, H20: Just Add Water was a huge success in Australia and paved the way to Hollywood stardom for several of its stars, including Phoebe Tonkin, Claire Holt and Luke Mitchell.
A third series aired due to worldwide popular demand before the show ended in 2010 and the cast have since bid farewell to Mako Island and moved onto bigger productions.
Cariba appeared in all three seasons of the show, in addition to its spin-off series Mako: Island Of Secrets.
The South African-born actress also starred in surfing television series Blue Water High as Bridget Sanchez for its third and final season which began filming in 2007.
The show followed the lives of a young group of students at Solar Blue, a high-performance surf academy, and aired on ABC1 and Nickelodeon.
She later took on minor roles in several Australian television shows and films, including nine episodes of the children's drama Dance Academy and as bruntte villain Ebony in Home and Away.
Cariba also got her big break in the US starring in Everyone Is Doing Great in 2021, alongside fellow Australian actor Alexandra Park.
Despite all three H20 stars continuing successful on-screen careers, with Tonkin and Holt also co-starring in Vampire Diaries prequel The Originals together, the Gold Coast drama series has continued to be a connection point for fans.
The series also experienced a resurgence in popularity during the Covid-pandemic as it was introduced to a whole new generation and went viral on TikTok.
Cariba, who was 18 when the show began, told Yahoo Lifestyle that she began to properly appreciate the series' impact.
'As I got older, I really started to appreciate how impactful the series was, especially for younger girls,' she said.
The actress said many fans have reached out to tell her Rikki taught them it is okay not to be 'the agreeable, nice, obedient girl'.
'That sort of stuff is really beautiful, I love hearing that,' she adds.
'That's really special to hear that a character you played when you were so young, to not even understand it, has helped people grow up and feel like they can be themselves more.'
That said, she told the publication she did not think a reboot starring herself and her co-stars would work because the show hinged on the leads being teenagers.
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