THIS IS MILO
Milo Ventimiglia muses on love, life and the success of This Is Us
Milo Ventimiglia is standing in his kitchen in his socks and pyjamas. Although he’s speaking to me over the phone from his home in California, it’s easy to picture the frown lines on his forehead that crinkle when he smiles, the Sylvester Stallone-style slanted mouth, his light brown eyes and dark brown beard. Because I, like millions of others, have been obsessively watching 40-year-old Ventimiglia most evenings of late, as Jack Pearson in family drama This Is Us. The show has been a breakout hit – an average of 15.3 million people tuned into the first series. Even before it was released, the trailer racked up 50 million Facebook views in its first 11 days. It’s overtaken Grey’s Anatomy in the ratings wars, has been spoofed on SNL, received 10 Emmy nominations last year (including one for Ventimiglia as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series) …I could go on. More simply: it is one of the biggest new US series in decades, one that viewers – including many of us in the Red office – can’t stop talking about. And the question we toss around on our coffee break is this: just what is it about this show that provokes such an intense emotional connection?
Everybody has a theory. Ventimiglia’s is that it ‘allows us to feel and to examine our own life’ and ‘lets us question our relationships and our impact on the ones we love the most’.
He’s right. This is not an ordinary television show; it is one that leaks deep into your heart. After the adrenaline-rush success of Breaking Bad and Game Of Thrones, here is a series that recognises that the most vital narrative threads in our lives are tied not to murders and meth, but to love and family, to the ways our childhood shapes our adult life. A large part of the connection comes from the way the writing makes you root for all of the characters as if you know and love them. But there is no doubt about it: the show works because of the family’s patriarch, Jack Pearson. Ventimiglia’s Jack – or more specifically his death – is, according to the show’s creator Dan Fogelman, the hinge on which all of the characters’ lives swing. Which means that if we don’t believe in Jack, in the impact he has on the lives of the people around him, then the whole show would unravel.
So today, as Ventimiglia talks, laughs and generously asks, ‘Does that make sense?’ after his more philosophical answers, I try to figure out what it is about this man that makes his performances feel so real to millions of us. After all, this isn’t the first time his acting has inspired fans’ devotion. As the bookish, brooding Jess Mariano in Gilmore Girls, an army of #Teamjess fanatics fell in love with him and such was the success of Heroes, in which
he played paramedic superhero Peter Petrelli from 2006-2010, Ventimiglia was named in Time magazine’s 2006 Person Of The Year issue, under People Who Mattered.
The fact that he dated his co-stars in both shows (Alexis Bledel in Gilmore Girls; Hayden Panettiere in Heroes) sparked media commotion around his love life, which might explain why he has decided not to publicly discuss his current relationship (he brought rumoured girlfriend Kelly Egarian to the Emmys but has not confirmed they’re together). He believes that if fans know personal details it distracts from the work, but several times during our conversation he uses the words ‘protect’ or ‘care’ when talking about the people he loves. I imagine he also wants to shield them from a world they haven’t necessarily signed up for themselves.
While the relationship Ventimiglia explored in Gilmore Girls was rooted in teenage love, in This Is Us the love story spans different decades and iterations; the urgent longing of first love as well as the rewarding but testing work of long-term marriage. I wonder what it
‘I LIKE TO THINK THAT I AM VERY PROTECTIVE OF THOSE I LOVE’
has taught him. ‘I think it’s about understanding that the parameters of love will ebb and flow, circumstances will change, your kids need to be fed and dropped off at school, jobs get in the way. But the basic core of love? It’s something that is everlasting, that grows with time and especially with care.’
He credits the authenticity of this on-screen marriage with the performance of his co-star Mandy Moore, too, whom he describes as ‘awesome’ and ‘one of the kindest human beings I’ve ever met’. He adds, ‘She is a deeply soulful actor, and in every scene with her I’m just thinking, “Thank God it’s Mandy.” I feel like I’m better because of her.’ For him, the Pearson marriage is ‘a good reminder to be careful with our loved ones. In troubled moments try not to think selfishly’. Ventimiglia seems to be drawn to taking care of others: ‘Friends and close family always say that I look out for people. I like to think I am very protective of those whom I love, just like Jack.’
If the Pearson family’s hinge is losing its patriarch, at a guess I’d say Ventimiglia’s is the sturdy, loving foundations upon which he was raised. Everything seems to come back to that, even playing Jack, which feels like ‘the living version of how I was raised, but this time I am the parent, not the child’. He describes his parents as ‘happy, loving people’ who instilled in him ‘a calm, peaceful nature that I will be forever grateful for’.
Growing up in Orange County, Ventimiglia watched his Sicilian father carefully to
‘BY THE WAY, ME, PERSONALLY? I AM KIND OF AN EMOTIONAL GUY’
see how he interacted with people. ‘I saw older cousins or friends always asking for his advice and he would always be there, listening. My father is a very good man to all – it wasn’t just my sisters and I who got to have him.’
This Is Us fans now see Ventimiglia as ‘America’s father’ – often approaching him in the street for fatherly wisdom or a hug – and he seems to be the patriarch on set, too, (where cast members say they turn to him for advice and that he knew the entire crew’s names from day one). Since he doesn’t have kids of his own, has playing a beloved father changed his perspective? ‘I’ve had a lot of people say to me, “Oh you play such a great dad, you’d be such a great father, you should have kids,”’ he says. ‘Playing “America’s father” hasn’t made me desire a family of my own any more, but I think what it does is make me embrace a way of life, hopefully, that is about trying to better myself, even in my flaws. And like Jack, trying to listen and inspire… I try to approach [those] things more as a friend or role model than [through] the specificity of having to rear children.’
Though his big break came with Gilmore Girls in 2002, Ventimiglia has been a working actor since he was 18 years old and while the Emmy award nominations today are ‘humbling’, it’s the craft that truly excites him: ‘The most satisfying part of it is being creative with other creative people, being able to walk on to a set with words on a page and line everything up with the entire crew. It all moves, it’s like putting a pulse into something that has no physical matter, it’s a symphony, it’s an orchestra, it’s a dance. Everything just comes together.’
Outside of work, he is happiest when he’s travelling, at home, with family and friends but also in his own company. ‘I think what I have tried to do in my life is have a fundamental core happiness that is unshakeable by anything or anyone. It’s a quiet, contented happiness. I think there are a lot of moments that make me happy, even ones that contradict one another – like I said, I love being with my friends and family, but I also love being by myself.’
Though he is keen to separate his private life from his work, it’s clear that there is some overlap, since he once said of his standout roles, ‘These characters popped up at the right time, not only for my career but also for my growth as a man. I don’t think I could have played Jack five years ago, even.’ So what has changed? ‘I think I just got older. Years on this planet definitely count for something – when you’re young you think you know everything and when you’re older… I think there is a releasing of the wheel of life a little bit, where you don’t try to control things – you understand that life is going to move however and in whichever direction.’ He pauses. ‘There are going to be bumps in the road and roadblocks – you just have to adapt to get around them.’
I’ll confess, I was a little apprehensive about interviewing this handsome, Harley Davidson-riding actor. What if he happened to be mean and spiky and ruined Jack Pearson for me for ever? Luckily, the lifelong vegetarian – who is also head of his own production company – surprises me at every turn, with philosophical musings on love, life and loss. Early on in our conversation he tells me, ‘By the way, me, personally?
I am kind of an emotional guy. I cry, Jack doesn’t.’ Has he always been that way? ‘I would probably say that it has happened more as I have grown older but I feel that my mum would say, “You were an emotional kid,” because I know that I was. I would definitely cry when I was little; when I was a teenager and a young adult, things would impact me deeply. But the older I’ve gotten the more I’m okay with feeling emotional, and understanding that it is human nature. We are emotional, vulnerable creatures and I think if we recognise that, not only in ourselves but in other people, then hopefully our relationships can be better because of it.’ I think that this final answer is Ventimiglia in a nutshell: thoughtful, analytical and, above all, determined, like his father, to be a good man to all.