“I’m going to miss everything,” says Mandy Moore about wrapping her final tearful episode of “This is Us.” “I’m going to miss opening my email inbox and getting a new script and knowing that it’s going to be full of extraordinary things for all of us to get to do.The story resonates as much with us as actors as it does the audience out there. It’s a lot to say goodbye to.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.
“This is Us” is ending its run after six seasons on NBC. The family drama created by Dan Fogelman has earned 38 Emmy nominations with four wins to date, including a Best Actress bid for Moore in 2019. The series follows the lives and families of two parents, and their three children, in several different time frames. Moore plays Rebecca Pearson, the matriarch of the family married to Jack (Milo Ventimiglia), and mother to the “Big Three” triplets Kevin (Justin Hartley), Kate (Chrissy Metz) and Randall (Sterling K. Brown).
“My life looks inherently different,” she admits. “I had come up against four failed pilot seasons. Pilots that got taken into various stages of development and then just never came to fruition. I was at this crossroads in life before I got cast on the show, thinking, ‘I’ve been doing this since I was 15 and I’m 31 now and maybe that part of my life is over. I found success and I should just pat myself on the back and be grateful and figure out what the next chapter is. Maybe I’ll move back to Florida where I grew up. Maybe I’ll go back to school. Maybe I’ll become a journalist.’ I thought the universe was trying to tell me with this sense of rejection that maybe it was time to move on. Then ‘This is Us’ came along.”
The actress launched her professional career as a singer when she was just 15 years old. “How could you be prepared for that?” she asks. “I [remember my] freshman year of high school, watching NSYNC, very specifically their Christmas record that they had out, and watching the music video singing, ‘Merry Christmas’ before school, and then like six months later I was opening up for them on their big summer amphitheater tour. Life was a really bizarre ride at 15. I guess the only thing that prepared me was that I have great parents.”
Moore also stepped behind the camera to direct the ninth episode of Season 6 of “This is Us,” titled “The Hill.” “I got to direct Chris Sullivan and Chrissy Metz in this remarkable standalone episode,” she describes. “The writing was so extraordinary and I got to just watch my friends from a completely different vantage point. Being on that other side is different. I was mesmerized. I really got lost in their performances and watching them.”
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