Milo Ventimiglia wasn't given the full script for the Season 2 premiere for the reveal of Jack's death in the family's house burning down.
The crew were so paranoid about spoilers getting out for the Season 4 finale that each actor was given little more than their own lines.
Actor-Inspired Element: Kate's neighbor Gregory tells her he had a stroke 2 years ago. Gregory is Timothy Omundson’s first major role since his own stroke that happened at the time.
All There in the Manual: In the years that take place after Kate's second wedding, the years are never specified. However, Mandy Moore shared the official prop or the funeral booklet for Rebecca done by show creators, which confirms that Rebecca died in 2033 at the age of 82. While the time of year is not specified, this means:
Jack Damon is 13-14 years old;
Hailey, Nick, and Franny are 12-13;
The Big Three are all 52-53;
Beth is 51
Déja is 27-28 and Malik is 29-30;
Tess is 24-25;
Nicky is approximately 85
Rebecca lived another seven years after Kate's second wedding;
Since Fogelman has stated that the Adult Jack Damon scenes take place 12 years after Rebecca passes, this means it is 2045 and Jack meets Lucy at age 26. When Kate, Toby, Phillip and Lauren watch his show, they are all in their mid-60s.
Author's Saving Throw: Immediately after the reveal of Laurel's survival in the Season 5 premiere, Dan Fogelman openly announced the very next day that further details about the twist would not be dragged out for years like Jack's death and the identity of "her" (not least because the show now had a definite endpoint to be working towards). He also stated in no uncertain terms that this was the very last time the show would do such a twist, nipping any jokes about "Whoops, turns out Jack survived the fire" in the bud.
Mandy Moore's acting career went very low key after the flop of License to Wed, as she again focused more on her singing with only Tangled getting her noticed, until she considered retiring from it. Then her performance on this show received a ton of praise and got a lot of speculation going on how she could build off it.
Milo Ventimiglia, to a lesser extent. After Heroes ended, the only high-profile thing he did after that was a supporting role in the reviled Adam Sandler comedy That's My Boy. Ventimiglia stuck to doing some low-profile work in indie movies and appeared in some short-lived TV series before This is Us made him a star again.
Cast the Expert: A behind the scenes case, as all the Vietnam War material was written by Tim O'Brien, a veteran of the war who went on to great acclaim for his semi-autobiographical novels and short stories about it.
Channel Hop: In the UK, the first two seasons aired onMore4, before becoming an Amazon Prime exclusive with episodes being released as they aired in America, with the final season being simultaneously released on Prime and Star (Disney+) two days after each episode premiered on NBC.
Content Leak: After the first airing of "Day of the Wedding", which ended on a cliffhanger revealing Kevin spent time with Sophie, Cassidy, and Arielle (the wedding singer) the night before Kate's wedding and driving up the drama about which one of those three women will be Kevin's wife, Ken Olin posted a photo from flashforward filming with only Sophie present, seemingly confirming she will be Kevin's wife in the future.
Sterling K. Brown's real life wife, Ryan Michelle Bathe, plays Yvette, the black mother who advises Rebecca about Randall's skin and hair and becomes a close friend of the Pearsons.
Deleted Scene: Just a few days before "The 20's" aired came Anthony Rapp's accusations that Kevin Spacey had molested him at a party, causing the crew to hastily cut a scene where Kevin's roommate offers to take him to a party at Spacey's. Apparently the crew seems to think that Canada exists in a bubble since the scene was left intact for the Canadian airing.
Blind theater actor Blake Stadnik makes his onscreen acting debut as the blind character Jack Damon. Though unlike the character, he had six years of sight rather than being blind from birth.
Timothy Omundson, who two years earlier suffered a stroke that physically affected him so much that he now refers to himself as "Timothy 2.0," has his first acting role since it happened as a man who similarly has just recently started to recover from a devastating stroke.
Dyeing for Your Art: Before the show premiered, Milo Ventimiglia was sporting a thick mustache and long hair, which had a lot of media outlets puzzled until the pilot premiered and revealed that because Jack is from the 1970s and 1980s, the shaggy hair and mustache is period appropriate. As he joked to Chelsea Handler:
Milo: [Dan Fogelman] walked around, asking every female in the office if she liked it or didn't like it in more explicit terms. Chelsea: You can use those terms. Milo: "Do you want to fuck Milo, yes?" or "Do you want to fuck Milo, no?" And it was split right down the middle!
Enforced Method Acting: In a deleted or hidden video clip on Entertainment Weekly's website, Milo said he had to change the babies' diapers for real while filming because they really did need their diapers changed.
Meaningful Release Date: The episode "Super Bowl Sunday" premiered on a Super Bowl Sunday, specifically Super Bowl LII.
Additionally, footage from the actual game can be seen playing on the TV in the background during one scene.
An episode of Will & Grace. In "The Wedding," Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes) claims to have a foolproof method to find the one gay cop out of a group of cops. He asks them one by one what their favorite show is. Most of them predictably say The Wire. But Officer Drew (Ryan Pinkston) says his favorite show is This Is Us. Soon Jack and Drew hook up in the men's room. By the way, Officer Murphy is played by Jack McGee, who has so far appeared on one episode of This Is Us.
An episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that first aired in June 2022, promising an even sadder seventh season of This Is Us in which every single episode is a funeral.
Renewed Before Premiere: it was renewed for a second and third season shortly after the first ended, and then for another three after the end of the third.
Troubled Production: The episode "There" went through some especially huge COVID-related production issues, resulting in the show going on an unplanned hiatus for nearly a month, just two episodes after it returned from the winter hiatus. Then another hiatus was forced just a few episodes later when Mandy Moore went on maternity leave, so Rebecca wouldn't be completely absent from the rest of the season.
A line was cut from the pilot that casually revealed Jack was no longer alive in the present, turning his status into a mystery for a few episodes.
Present day Rebecca was going to be a separate actress, but Mandy Moore quickly convinced the crew she could do it.
The decision to integrate the COVID-19 Pandemic into the show rather than pretend it didn't exist forced some significant changes to the story plans. Most notably, Kevin and Randall's big argument is rendered All for Nothing when the dementia drug trial is cancelled, and the changes in how doctor visits work prevented their plans for Kevin and Madison to keep meeting with Eli and his horse-whispering daughter.
After the scene of Randall talking with Mr. Rogers in Season 5, the producers stated that they'd had the possibility for such a scene in mind from the start due to his show being filmed in Pittsburgh, but it took that long to figure out the best and most meaningful way to do it.
A few months after the series finale, Alexandra Breckenridge confirmed in an interview that the original plan for her return was for her to become pregnant, suggesting Kevin’s “pregnant fiancee” teased in Season 4 was supposed to be Sophie and not Madison. This plan was changed due to her commitments to Virgin River.
Dan Fogelman stated that while Kate followed Kevin to Los Angeles as he pursued his acting career, Randall stayed behind on the East Coast to stay close to their parents.
At the start of Season 4, Fogelman specified that the Jack Damon storyline takes place twelve years after the future scenes in the previous two seasons.
Following the airing of "Katoby", Dan Fogelman admitted that the production had intended to have Alexandra Breckenridge appear as Sophie during Season 5 and 6, but COVID protocols meant that it wasn’t feasible due Breckinridge’s role on Virgin River. Ultimately, Breckinridge would wrap production on Virgin River in time to reprise her role over the remaining episodes of the series.
