“I was able to start a career at 15… when pop music was reigning supreme,” but for Mandy Moore, that path never fully stuck. “Music has always been the thing I’m most passionate about,” she told me, and because it didn’t come with the same expectations as acting, “it felt like I had the ultimate freedom… to make the kind of music I wanted.”
That freedom really clicked during the pandemic. “Music became this lifeline for us,” she said, writing at home with Taylor Goldsmith while “confused and fearful like the rest of the world,” then finding out she was pregnant and channeling all of that into In Real Life. “It was just a product of being at home and being together,” which is about as simple and as honest as it gets. #MandyMoore
Mandy Moore on This Is us, Motherhood, and Making Peace With “Candy”