Mandy Moore walked the red carpet at the This Is Us series finale celebration on Sunday, where she revealed there are scenes in the final episode that were filmed years ago. The series finale, entitled Us, will air May 24 on NBC.
From left, Milo Ventimiglia, Chris Sullivan, Dan Fogelman, Mandy Moore and Chrissy Metz arrive for an FYC screening of the This Is Us series finale. Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
“A lot of what’s in for Milo in the finals, to be honest [Ventimiglia] and I was filmed years ago,” Moore told Deadline on the red carpet. “Well, I don’t even remember what it was. We had a few things we shot for it that I’m looking forward to. But I’ve read the script and look forward to seeing everyone else’s work. I really like it. In my own selfish way – maybe because my character died in the last episode – I felt like last week was the finale and this one feels more like an epilogue in a way. I think it’s a really beautiful way of tying things together and tying them together in a very satisfying way.”
Series creator Dan Fogelman confirmed that planning for the finale began four years ago, revealing that “it’s been a long road to get here.” He said he needed to distance himself from what he was doing on the show and how he could do his job.
“It’s been a complicated struggle to step away from that and get a little distance, not to get carried away with all the emotions,” Fogelman shared.
It was also difficult for Moore to pull away from her emotions as she filmed her character’s death in the penultimate episode and also reconnected with her true love Jack (Ventimiglia) and other characters from previous seasons.
“Everything,” she says of what she loved most about the episode titled “The Train.” “From working with Ron Cephas Jones and Gerald McRaney, all those blasts from the past if you will,” Moore said. “It was really an emotional blow for me. Every time I read the script – and I read it 5 or 6 times – I had such an emotional reaction that I really worried about how I would feel when I was on the set. But once I was a little bit off the initial tears, it was fine. I was like, ‘We know how to do this, we’ve done 105 episodes. It’s good.'”
Ventimiglia recalls his final days as Jack, which were turbulent as he and Moore struggled with three crying babies on set, but felt complete by the time he was done.
“It was whole and it was full,” he said. “I was happy to end the show with Mandy in a scene together because that’s how we started. It felt good, it felt fulfilled. It felt like we were given this opportunity to wrap things up respectfully and wholeheartedly for the characters. I was grateful.”
Chrissy Metz can emotionally understand the farewell to the series after 6 seasons.
“I knew it was going to end, and I asked myself, ‘What am I going to do?’ And all I can do is just feel how I’m going to feel,” she shared. “And there were a lot of feelings all at once and I had to hold it together. But I knew it would be the last time I would see Justin [Hartley] as Kevin and Sterling [K. Brown] as Randall. I thought, ‘Oh, this is really happening.’
With reporting by Matt Grobar.