“Us” didn’t just live in the realm of the future, though.
So in essence, your nostalgia was their nostalgia was all our nostalgia.
Why all the advance planning?
Mandy Moore, Parker Bates, Mackenzie Hancsicsak, Milo Ventimiglia, and Lonnie Chavis on ‘This Is Us’.Ron Batzdorff/NBC
“Nobody balked,” Fogelman says.
“I was like, ‘Listen, we’re going to make this now.
And you’re either going to pay for it now or you’re going to pay for it later.
Milo Ventimiglia, Mackenzie Hancsicsak, Mandy Moore, Lonnie Chavis, and Parker Bates on ‘This Is Us’.Ron Batzdorff/NBC
We’re not going to use any of that.’
Because that’s where you really would’ve gotten screwed financially.
They always really trusted us to do our thing.”
Ron Cephas Jones, Eris Baker, and Faithe Herman on ‘This Is Us’.Ron Batzdorff/NBC
And they were like, ‘Great!’
Then they came in and nailed it every single day.
The adult actors in those scenes credit their go-with-the-flow spirit to their devout faith in Fogelman.
Sterling K. Brown and Ron Cephas Jones on ‘This Is Us’.Ron Batzdorff/NBC
“I kind of remember it, I kind of don’t,” Moore says with a laugh.
“We were not even halfway through the series.
This is such a neat, quiet scene in bed with Milo about the scar above my eye.'
Milo Ventimiglia and Lonnie Chavis on ‘This Is Us’.Ron Batzdorff/NBC
So I just trusted.
I was like, ‘Eh, Dan has a master plan.
“Dan had an idea about filming a particular moment in time with the kids before they grew up.
It didn’t matter if it was going to end up in the final edit or not.
Aside from a little extra secrecy with the script, it was a rather quotidian week of filming.
“We had so much work still to do.
It didn’t seem that big.
Thank God Dan was thinking ahead to get it!’
[They] just played as any other scene[s] that we shot, which was good.
It kind of took the pressure off.
I mean, he said it like it was in stone.”
“I knew we had it,” he says.
“I knew it was good.
And so the footage sat.
And when it was done sitting, it sat a lot longer.
I really should make this the third-to-last episode.'”
But he was so busy with the other episodes that he put it off just a little longer.
I have to look at this,'” he says.
I had it on my laptop and I shared it to the big screen downstairs.
Which I never do with anyone, but I was almost too nauseous to look at it by myself.
But we sat and we watched it and we were just so absorbed.
And it was such a nice experience.
I was just very excited by it.”
The stars felt a similar rush reading the finale script and seeing that vintage footage.
“Dan called me and said, ‘Do you remember that scene that we cut?
I found the place for it in the finale,'” Jones recalls.
I vaguely remembered it, but I didn’t remember the specificity of it.
He’ll put it on the shelf.
This will be a perfect time to place that piece into this tapestry.’
That’s what happened with that scene."
“There was a cloud around William’s heart,” the actor says.
“William knew in his heart that he probably wasn’t going to be coming back.
He actually got an opportunity not only to be a father, but to experience being a grandfather.
“Tears just come streaming down your eyes, man,” he says.
1, first of all, it all fits together really, really beautifully.
2 was that he saw it.
He really, really had it.
He wasn’t just talking about having it.
Like, he really had it figured out.
I was like, ‘How do you ?’
I stand in awe.”
It’s very rewarding and very fulfilling."
That the past would play such a pivotal role at the end ofThis Is Us?
Well, that might be its most organic and least surprising twist.
