Uncle Nicky (Griffin Dunne) will walk down the aisle!
Randall (Sterling K. Brown) will become a rising star in some fashion!
and these news flashes will get full stories in the coming months.
‘This Is Us’.Ron Batzdorff/NBC
Also needing more context and illumination?
DAN FOGELMAN:Time.
The show has always been a little bit about how we view our lives through time and zoom out.
And the last season, as we get deeper into it, does that a lot.
I’m starting to feel that kind of bittersweet emotion that comes with something coming to an end.
If you were to use a superlative to describe season 6, what would it be?
By the end, it may be the most ambitious.
Is that in terms of the amount of story you plan to tell?
In terms of the storytelling forms you want to break?
What we’re asking of some of the actors particularly Mandy Moore right now is beyond ambitious.
How will the family cope with Rebecca’s declining health this season, and how will she?
Is everyone trying to bank as many memories while they can?
Rebecca’s story line and her disease really factors into all of that.
This is a family whose childhoods and adulthoods have been defined by one another.
So I think Rebecca’s illness will put them in the spotlight together.
How much time will we spend in that distant-future time period this season, especially early on?
Not a lot in the early part of the season.
And then there’s a clear shape to our season as we move forward.
But for the most part, we’re going to really stay in the present.
The premiere takes place on the Big Three’s 41st birthdays.
What adjectives you would use to describe the season 6 premiere?
This season’s going to have a nice, quiet, slow pace to it, intentionally.
And some things need to be set up to then explode later or come to fruition later.
You saw Kevin essentially get left at the altar.
We have seen Rebecca worrying about where her health is going next.
In the premiere’s ’80s-set past story, Jack and Rebecca will handle a parenting dilemma involving a tragedy.
What can you say there?
It’s one we’ve been planning for quite a while to start our sixth season.
What lies ahead for Kate in season 6?
That’s a good way of describing it.
When I was talking about the ambition of the show, Mandy has really ambitious stuff this year.
Chrissy and Chris have really, really complicated adult stuff that we haven’t explored yet.
I think self-empowerment is a good way of looking at it.
She hadn’t moved forward.
Her journey is one of self-realization, self-actualization.
But that doesn’t always come easily.
And it doesn’t always come without some wounds in the process.
A big bomb was dropped in the season 5 finale, in regard to Kate’s divorce and remarriage.
Long-distance can be corrosive.
I think that’s very fair.
We’ve talked about it ad nauseam, but there’s always been a big-picture plan for the show.
We feel very comfortable that we don’t have to rush.
We’re not picking up with Toby and Kate in complete marital crisis on the cusp of divorce.
We owe a lot there.
But we’re going to live with Toby and Kate for quite a while.
Disintegrations of marriages can be ugly often.
They can be beautiful at times.
They’re not just all one thing most of the time.
We’re going to take a stab at show that in all its colors.
Chrissy hinted thatwe’re going to see the end of the journey of two important characters this season.
Obviously our mind goes to Rebecca.
Can we talk a little bit about who that second character is?
I mean, it’s possible.
It might even be more.
[Laughs] It could be less.
We’re spanning a lot of time by the time we get to the end of this.
Sometimes it just comes with the passing of time.
Sometimes stuff happens that takes people before their time.
So there is some combination of all of that.
Kevin has had a colorful, up-and-down career and has walked off a lot of projects.
What is the fallout from all this?
Where do we find him professionally this season?
And, of course, he’s navigating parenting responsibilities with Madison after their split.
That is demanding a lot of his focus and a lot of his existential crisis.
He’s just had a stinker coming out.
He’s developing a reputation for walking off sets.
How soon do we start to get into this professional rise?
That’s a bit of a slow burn.
The journey to get from here to there is a long one.
And other things that may be happening to the family.
There were other dangling flash-forward questions coming out of last season.
Who does Uncle Nicky end up marrying?
Who gets out of the white car?
Who’s the father of Deja’s baby?
How much of these mysteries are slow burns?
Will some of those questions get answered sooner than later?
Two or maybe even three of the specifics you asked are in the second episode.
But a lot of the other stuff people are going to have to be patient for.
You would have nothing left to ask me about spoilers.
You might want to call me and say, “I don’t like what happened to such-and-such.
I don’t like who such-and-such wound up with.”
But you won’t be going, “Who?”
Hopefully it will set us up for a very beautiful and simple ending to the entire venture.
How early in the season does the show tackle that?
You’ve said that you have some good stuff planned.
And it’s really good.
That’s a big part of this season and even the front half of this season.
I think it’s very rewarding.
It’s an exciting journey.
I remember long ago when you said, “Give him a chance!
There’s a much more nuanced story to tell here.”
The show is also known for its form-breaking episodes.
Can you tease one?
It’s very ambitious.
So they’re all directing another key character in an episode.
Our fourth episode up is one of those specialized, very different episodes.
And it’s as good as Milo Ventimiglia has ever been in the show.
It’s a Jack episode, and it’s really, really good.
By the end of the season, this show, before getting really simple, it gets really ambitious.
To me, it may be [Ventimiglia’s] best episode of the entire series.
What’s the earliest tease that it’s possible for you to give for the series finale?
And then kill the book.
So I do think it’s going to feel like that, closing a final chapter.
I do think after a lot of ambition in the season, I think it will feel really simple.
I know what it is.
I’ve known what it is for a while.
But yeah, I feel like we have the right ending.
When we talked back in May, it seemed very unlikely that there would be any spin-offs.
I mean, you have your moments.
It’s actually ending.
But what if…?"
So it definitely feels like the end and the time to go.
Who the hell knows?
But in terms of any continuous spin-off or continuation of the show?
No, we’re definitely bringing it to the end.
For a preview of the upcomingThis Is Usaction,see what hints that Chrissy Metz dropped.
And readwhat Mandy Moore and Jon Huertas had to say.
And check outwhat Sterling K. Brown and Susan Kelechi Watson revealed.
Andnewcomer Chris Geere, a.k.a.
