Moore enjoys present in ‘This Is Us’
Show came at important juncture in actress’ life
Playing an expectant mother of triplets was already daunting for Mandy Moore. But playing a 66-year-old mother to three thirtysomething children? That was not something she was prepared to do.
“There are no YouTube videos for that!” Moore, 32, says, emphatically enough to make you wonder if she actually tried searching for some.
In NBC’s breakout freshman hit “This Is Us,” Moore stars as Rebecca Pearson, a wife and mother to three children — twins (a third baby did not survive the delivery) and an adopted son who was born on the same day. The show returns to NBC Tuesday at 9 p.m.
Time is a crucial component to the family drama, which makes use of a nonlinear narrative to explore the characters at different phases in their lives — hence the sporadic aging by 30-plus years for Moore’s present-day look as a grandmother.
“Initially, I was taking selfies like crazy,” Moore says. “But now I’m like, ‘eh,’ it’s old hat now.”
This is the Moore of 2016. The former squeaky-clean teenage pop star who once crooned about missing a gentleman friend like “Candy” in the late ’90s against the backdrop of brightly colored Volkswagen Beetles is now playing a wife and mom on a hit TV show that has emerged as a rare broadcast drama to strike a chord across the country with its feel-good tone.
“I was ready to play a wife and mom,” Moore says. “I’m ready for that phase in my actual life, so it feels very natural.”
Moore first branched into acting in the early aughts with roles in such films as “The Princess Diaries” and “A Walk to Remember.” Over the years, she racked up a number of starring and supporting roles in film and television, but a signature, breakout role proved elusive.
In 2012, she starred in “Family Trap,” an ABC comedy pilot about newlywed restaurateurs. She followed that up with a CBS legal pilot called “The Advocates.” She was also signed to star in ABC’s American version of Sharon Horgan’s “Pulling” but ultimately dropped out.
“Trying the pilot process for a couple of years was brutal,” Moore says. “It did sort of make me question, ‘Should I do something else? Should I concentrate on music again?’ I didn’t know which end was up sometimes.”
Moore says “This Is Us” came at an important juncture in her life. She was divorcing singer-songwriter Ryan Adams after six years of marriage and felt like her career was stuck in idle.
“My personal life had taken an unimaginable turn,” she says. “That part of my life felt like it was in chaos. Add to that the fact that I just felt like I couldn’t get my career moving again. I had intentionally taken a break to be a married person, to nest. I’d been working since I was 15. It was the first time I took a conscious step away. Trying to start the cogs of the machine back up again, it just wasn’t clicking for a while. When I read this pilot, I was like, this is it.”
“This Is Us” reunites Moore with Dan Fogelman, the creator of the show who also wrote Disney’s animated feature “Tangled” (2010), which featured Moore’s voice work. Fogelman’s pride in Moore’s growth as an actress was apparent during a trip to his office over the summer ahead of the show’s launch. He was eager to share rough footage from an episode that featured Moore’s Rebecca telling her thenhusband Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) to curb his drinking — it was a monologue that had originally been part of her audition process.