Staying Fit

NBC’s hit family drama This Is Us returns for its sixth and final season this month, and the decades-spanning saga about the Pearson clan is still packed with all the twists, tricky timelines and tears you’ve come to expect. If you’re a fan of the show, you already know the basics — and if you’re not, you might want to stop reading until you’ve caught up. There are spoilers ahead!
Rebecca (Mandy Moore) and Jack Pearson (Milo Ventimiglia) are the parents of three children, named Randall (Sterling K. Brown), Kevin (Justin Hartley) and Kate (Chrissy Metz), who were all born on the same day. The show jumps back and forth through time, introducing us to pivotal Pearson moments from the past, present and future. In this feel-everything drama, the family is touched by tragedies and triumphs that include, but are not limited to, the Vietnam War, drug addiction, Alzheimer’s, emotional trauma, racism, miscarriages, breakups, drunk driving, rehab and a devastating house fire, but also healing, support, adoption, career success, humor, creativity, music and love. As we wind down to the series finale, it’s a great time to take a look back at some of the behind-the-scenes trivia and on-screen moments you may have missed. Break out your tissues!

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1. Milo Ventimiglia is a father figure on set
As the actor who plays the Pearson patriarch, Milo Ventimiglia takes his duties rather seriously. Inspired by the way he saw Will Smith treat cast and crew on the set of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air when he was an upstart actor, Ventimiglia told The Hollywood Reporter that he studies the call sheet on every shoot day so he knows everyone’s name. When the cast returned to shoot the second season, Ventimiglia welcomed them back with trucker hats featuring the logo of Big Three Homes, Jack’s dream construction company. “I’m definitely the father, [Mandy Moore’s] definitely the mother,” he told US Weekly. “But I think we both feel protective of our group. Not just our cast but our entire group. There is a level of looking out for everyone. I know Susan [Kelechi Watson] has called me ‘Papa Pearson’ or ‘Papa Bear’ before. So if she says it, it must be true.”

2. This Is Us wasn’t always planned as a TV show
Before he created This Is Us, writer and producer Dan Fogelman — who also penned the scripts for Cars, Tangled and Crazy, Stupid, Love — envisioned this story as a movie with a sprawling ensemble cast. The big twist would be that, by the film’s end, all the seemingly unrelated characters would be revealed to be a set of octuplets. Later, when he finally decided to turn it into a TV show, the original title was 36, a reference to the age that Jack and “the Big Three” were turning in the pilot episode.
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