On most shows an actor won’t get an episode until a couple days before, at best a week before. On this one, because there’s so many times where you are going in different eras and you’re no doubt trying to track where the character is. Are you getting the scripts earlier all?
No, unfortunately it’s not just because it’s just the amount of people in our cast. We’re networking television in itself. We were sort of doing 18 episodes one on top of the other and we only had a break for Christmas. It meant that as time went on, the time allotted between from script to script, and episode to episode kept getting shorter and shorter, tighter and tighter. So, by the end of the season we would get scripts like three days before we would start shooting. And it was difficult especially because I’m like, “Wait, where am I? What decade am I in? What era am I in? Am I present day as well in this episode?” There were always huge question marks but it’s just part of the game and we kind of got used to it after a while.
In that context was there one episode that may have been more challenging than the others?
I would say maybe just from a logistical stand point, the Thanksgiving episode. I was the only cast member that worked every day of that episode because I was in both story lines. [It’s about] how these [family] Thanksgiving traditions came to be, like where they started. So, I worked all eight days and four of them were in prosthetics and four of them were not. That was a pretty, exhausting episode and of course you role right in to the next episode and most of the cast has half of that episode off, of the episode before and I sort of had to jump right back in to work. Not that I’m complaining, but just from that logistical standpoint of working every day and my poor skin. It really takes a toll on my skin whenever I have to wear those prosthetics, so I don’t necessarily look forward to it. Especially if I have to do it consecutive days in a row.
I’m sorry this is the most cliché question I’m going to ask you. Was there one particular scene in the season, one particular episode where you felt, “This is her. This is the character to a T, this is what I’ve been trying to convey in her.”
Oh my god. I would say that my favorite episode, my favorite like, just a big moment for me was the 12th episode was just stand alone with just Milo and I, and Gerald McRaney as Dr. K and the fireman from the pilot. And it sort of went back to the 24 hours before we went to the hospital and delivered the babies. And I thought the concept was just interesting but it really allowed expand upon this monumental moment before this, like this couple is right on the precipice of this moment that is going to forever change the course of their lives, together and as individuals becoming parents. And it was a really colorful episode because my character, obviously is like super hormonal. All these notes and things over the course of the day before you meet them in the pilot that obviously I would never have known in the pilot. It’s just drew a more fully realized picture who this woman was, and how trepidatious she was, she was really scared about motherhood and so terrified of making a million mistakes and messing up her children. She really believes that obviously as any parent would that they deserved the lead the most perfect lives and have every opportunity possible. I have this two page monologue basically to my unborn children, in my stomach right before I go in to labor. That was a really, the stuff Dan was writing was exquisite, per usual. And I don’t know, just the whole idea of that episode I thought was really, really set it apart from the rest of the season.
I think the camera sticks on you for a long time. It’s almost one long take if I remember.
Yeah. It was like the whole monologue. Yeah, but I liked that. I thought it was a really vulnerable, beautiful moment for this mother that’s- Again, life is just about to change and she has no idea.
The first season of “This Is Us” is available on NBC.com.
