āThis Is Usā stars talk game-changing twist in premiere
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains key plot points from Tuesdayās series premiere of This Is Us.
An actor who has an epic meltdown on the set of his hit sitcom. A perfectionist businessman who has just tracked down the biological father who left him as a baby at a fire station. A personal assistant who is ready to make some changes in her life, including the number on her scale. A man who is wearing nothing but a towel ā a Terrible Towel ā whose wife is about to give birth to triplets.
What do all of these people who are turning 36 years old have in common besides the same birthday? The series premiere of This Is Us just showed you in poignant, funny, and charming ways ā as well as an extremely surprising one: Theyāre all related.
Yes, the NBC dramedy ā which is the fallās most buzzed-about new series ā pulled off one of the most rewarding (and clever) pilot twists in recent years with this feel-good game-changer: Near the end of the episode, Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore), the couple expecting triplets, lose one of the babies during childbirth, but wind up adopting a baby who was brought to the hospital after being abandoned at a fire station. And when the camera pulls back, it reveals people clad in ā70s clothes, while a TV set shows Walter Cronkite talking about Iran. The connections fired: Jack and Rebeccaās story takes place in 1979, and the three kids that they took home from the hospital that day were Kevin (Justin Hartley) and Kate (Chrissy Metz) ā who were established earlier in the episode as twins ā as well as Randall (freshly minted Emmy winner Sterling K. Brown). The episode took place in two different eras, unspooling a story about the parents at the same age as their children.
Perhaps you figured it out when you saw the firefighter offering Jack a cigarette in the hospital, with the three babies next to each other in the nursery. Or maybe it was when Kate prodded down-and-out Kevin to recall the proverb that their father used to repeat ā āThereās no lemon so sour that you canāt make something resembling lemonadeā ā which winked at the poignant consoling conversation that Dr. K (Gerald McRaney) had with Jack. Letās hope that itās not right now as you read this story. Whenever you had that moment of āOhhhhhh!ā youāre probably aching with questions right about now. Click here for illuminating intel and perspective from series creator Dan Fogelman, and keep reading to see the cast membersā thoughts on the twist and their teases about what happens next. In addition, executive producers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who directed the episode, dish a few secrets about the big reveal below. To get you started, hereās a promising quote from Brown: āDude, what youāve seen in the pilot is the very tip of the iceberg.ā
On the moment that the actors figured out the twist:
STERLING K. BROWN: Reading [the script], it started to slowly dawn on me. I remember specifically reading the camera pulling back and seeing everybody was wearing ā70s-style clothes and lapels. And then Kate says, āWhatās that thing that Dad used to say to usā¦ about lemons and lemonade?ā I think right around there was when I was like, āOh my godā¦ Iām the third kid?ā My jaw was on the ground. I was telling my wife, āRyan, youāve got to read this! Youāve got to read this!ā and she was like, āItās pretty damn special.ā
JUSTIN HARTLEY: Iām not going to lie to you, it wasnāt washing over me at all, untilā¦ the end, when he offered him a cigarette. I mean, Iām not going to be one of those guys whoās like, āI have a sixth sense! I knew!āā¦ I was like, āOh, damn!ā Now I want to know the whole story, not only going forward, but I want to know the story going back the other way as well. You feel like youāve got the whole thing, and then at the very end you realize you were in the middle. And you want to hear all the in-between moments and what happened when they were kids.
MANDY MOORE: I think most people arenāt clicking until he offers the cigarette to [Jack]. Thatās the moment where youāre like, āWaitā¦.ā Even when I was reading it for the first time, I was like, āYou canāt smoke inā¦a hospital!ā Thatās when I was like, āOh, whoa!ā Then they pull back, and you really see the television and whatās on the newsā¦. I didnāt see it coming at all. Even seeing it for a fourth and fifth time ā at this point when the reveal is about to happen, thereās that shot of him in the window, looking in the nursery, my adrenaline starts pumping and I start to feel this tingling in my body, oddly. And I know itās coming, I was a part of this, but I have a very emotional response to it.
MILO VENTIMIGLIA: A, it was clever. B, it was something that was truly unexpected. I did not see that comingā¦ When grown-up Kate says, āWhat was it that dad said about the lemons?ā and then it cuts right back to Jack standing at the nursery window looking at the babies, you go, āOh, wow. Itās a family. Theyāre all connected. This is how the show is going to work.ā And knowing the lessons we learn as kids, the experiences that we have, the idea of having the parents the same age as the kids and that kind of mirror reflection of what theyāre all going through, what theyāre all experiencing, itās a very genius move by Dan. I mean, heās taking the most simple story ā itās a family ā but then youāre going to see mom and dad the same age as all the kids, and then youāre going to see them at different ages.
CHRISSY METZ: It was when the paramedic came up to Jack at the window and he said, āOh, we have a baby that was left at the fire station.ā And I was like, āWait, wait. What are they going to do with the baby?ā And I was like, āOh, I got it!ā And of course then I was trying to be Magnum P.I., trying to figure it all out. But that was the moment for meā¦. [Itās] about not letting a terrible situation affect you to the point where you are just handicapped for life. You make lemonade out of lemons. Because things happen for a reasonā¦. Itās so beautiful on so many different levels for me.
On the attempts to throw viewers off the scent:
JOHN REQUA: We did some things to blur the line. We put period cars in the modern storyline just to blur the line a little bit. But I feel like nurses and doctors will be onto it before anybody else. I feel nurses and doctors will watch the show and go, āOh, come on! They havenāt used that in 30 years!ā
GLENN FICARRA: The equipment is all out of date, and the costumes are fairly out of date, but as TV viewers, we accept a wide range of mistakes in showsā¦ Originally, we were just going to shoot everything really tight ā and Dan wrote very carefully ā but the more we were shooting, the more weāre like, āYou know what? Just show it all. I donāt think weāre going to have a problem.ā Youāre just not expecting it. I think thatās also in large part to do with the setup as saying it has to do with people with the same birthday, so youāre thinking along those lines, and itās a really good misdirect.
On how todayās retro-hipster vibe also helped to hide the twist:
MOORE: Everything I was wearing, it was all vintage maternity stuff. The bra that I had on top of my T-shirt was vintage, like, deadstock. Everything was pretty period-correctā¦. I mean, I probably shouldnāt have, but when Milo and I were doing our fittings and we were taking still photos to use as set decoration, I took a picture of us and I put it on Instagram. I think I said something like, ā1970s or hipsters? What do you think?ā It was a bit more of a spoiler than the network probably wanted, but everybody was like, āYeah, hipster.ā āHipster.ā āHipster.ā I love that John and Glenn didnāt necessarily go out of their way. If youāre looking for it and paying attention to whatās going on around us, itās pretty obvious that weāre in a different decade.
VENTIMIGLIA: People are just like, āOh, wow. Denim on denim. A beard. Long hair. Yeah, this guy must live in Silver Lake.ā There was definitely a kind of timeless quality, but yet, it worked today. And I know that was the thing even in the script that Dan had written: We didnāt want to give away, any nod, anything that was going to be telling that we were in 1979. And then I think working to our favor is just Mandy and I look like some cool, hip kids. [laughs]ā¦ When I got the job, knowing that we were going to be going back to the past ā and Iād already walked into the room with a beard and my hair was already longer ā Dan had said to me, āGrow your hair, grow your beard out, stop working out.ā I think the idea was to not look too modern, so I was basically like, āYes, yes, no. I got to work out just for my own well-being, sanity and health.ā But I just kept eating.
On planting clues throughout the episode:
FICARRA: Every scene was set up as Easter eggs all overā¦ the Terrible Towel. The [box labeled] ā79 photos. I think thereās something in every scene, because we had specifically instructed people to put an Easter egg in every scene. So even in [Randallās] office, I donāt think we see them very much, but thereās pictures on the desk, and thereās an autographed picture of [Steelers great] Franco Harris.
REQUA: We have to tip our hat to the hipsters of the world. Because in their bedroom, they have a vinyl record player. And [Jackās] hair and his beard are exactly period, and his clothes and her clothes are exactly period. I live in Los Feliz; there are people dressed like that on the street every day. Hipsters really saved us.
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