The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
His second home
Six seasons of playing Jack Pearson on ‘This Is Us’ has made Milo Ventimiglia a virtual Pittsburgher
Before “This Is Us,” Milo Ventimiglia had only a cursory familiarity with Pittsburgh. The Southern California native had been to the city a few times doing branded-content work with American Eagle Outfitters at its South Side headquarters, but he had never thought too critically about what it means to be a yinzer.
That changed when he got the role of Jack Pearson on “This Is Us,” the wildly popular NBC drama that began its sixth and final season on Tuesday. Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore, who plays Jack’s wife Rebecca, were tasked with anchoring a Pittsburgh-set storyline that would serve as the formative years for their children Kevin (played in the future by Justin Hartley), Randall (Sterling K. Brown) and Kate (Chrissy Metz).
Six years later, Ventimiglia has essentially gone full yinzer. He officially identifies as a Pittsburgh Steelers fan and said he often wears a Steelers jacket or Pittsburgh Pirates jersey while in the hair and makeup chair prior to filming episodes. He even toyed with giving Jack a Pittsburgh accent before deciding against it because “I wasn’t sure the country could handle it.”
“I definitely carry Pittsburgh in my heart,” Ventimiglia
told the Post-Gazette. “For me, it kind of felt like this working-class town in the Rust Belt. Really good hardy, American folks. That’s what I really wanted to plug into with Jack. That was the most in-depth I got with it, let me understand what it feels like to be from Pittsburgh and what the heart of the city is.”
“This Is Us” proved its western Pennsylvania bona fides to viewers right away with a scene in the Season 1 pilot featuring Ventimiglia wearing nothing but a Terrible Towel. Ventimiglia said “that first moment where my ass preceded my face is still being discussed” and even came up among the “This Is Us” family during a Season 6 premiere event.
Prior to “This Is Us,” Ventimiglia had to learn the flavor of eastern Pennsylvania when he portrayed the Italian Stallion’s son in 2006’s “Rocky Balboa.” Philadelphia and Pittsburgh felt drastically different to him, with the former being closer to his experience with the Los Angeles area in terms of the amount of transplants who live there.
“Pittsburgh feels more accessible than Philly,” he said. “Philly feels a little more old world. There’s just something about the community of Pittsburgh that felt a little more like, hey, we’re from here, versus we moved here. Philly felt like a larger collection of people who landed in Philadelphia.”
Season 6 of “This Is Us” is still in production, and Ventimiglia is currently just as focused on hitting
the show’s air dates as what viewers will think of Season 6. He’s confident, however, that fans who have stuck with the show all these years will “be pretty pleased with the stories we have this season.”
It appears a lot of the final season will focus on the concept of memory, especially as future Rebecca struggles with her newly diagnosed cognitive impairment. As someone who has played her TV husband for six years, Ventimiglia said he expects “I’ll be close with (Moore) for the rest of my life” and trusts creator Dan Fogelman to land Rebecca’s story in a satisfying way.
“Fogelman always has something up his sleeve, where he’s definitely caught up in these memories that these characters are living
and how the past informs the present, and the future is given to us in glimpses and ideas,” he said. “That’s one thing that we’ll always try to do, is really create these moments and hang onto these memories.
“It’s a wonderful send-off to experience what Rebecca’s going through.”
As for Jack, he hopes fans remember his Pittsburgh super dad as “the man who always did his best” and “really does want good for other people.” His only real regret from the show was how rarely he got to work with Hartley, Brown and Metz because their storylines took place decades after his character was out of the picture. He has, however, enjoyed watching them grow as actors and hopes his own performance has
helped inform theirs.
You will also soon be able to catch Ventimiglia on Amazon Prime’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” which is coming back for its fourth season on Feb. 18. Ventimiglia said he had a lot of fun reuniting with creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, with whom he worked on “Gilmore Girls,” and said it was “nice to be able to step outside of Jack for the moment and play someone different.”
That’s not to say he’s necessarily looking to play less dramatic roles after his years as Jack, although he now is a free agent willing to wait and see what opportunities come his way. His focus for the next few months, though, is squarely on providing “This Is Us” fans with an ending he feels they deserve.