Mandy Moore: ‘I ALMOST QUIT!’
Mandyd Mmoore was on the brink of quitting TV when the script for new comedy-drama This is Us landed in her lap.
“I’d done three pilots this year and none of them got picked up,” says the singer-turned-actress, who shot to fame at the age of 15 with her hit single Candy.
“I was pretty heartbroken and trying to re-evaluate if I wanted to do this anymore, but it was a no-brainer with that script.”
The trailer for the series was viewed more than 50 million times on Facebook within 11 days of airing, and it’s been branded the breakaway hit of 2016 in the US.
Mandy, 32, plays Rebecca, the wife of Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and busy mother to triplets in the feelgood family weepy from the writers of Crazy, Stupid, Love. “The majority of my work is with Milo. I feel incredibly lucky to work with him,” she gushes of her co-star. The cast also includes Sterling K Brown and Chrissy Metz. “We’re 17 episodes in now and Milo and I have our own little language; we can just sort of look at each other and know what we’re thinking.” Familial twists and turns are the driving force behind the script, and they aren’t unusual in Mandy’s own life either. Her own upbringing had a few – her mother left her father for another woman and both her brothers are gay. “You can’t help but bring bits and pieces of your life to a character,” she says, adding that having a cry after filming some of the heavier scenes has been therapeutic. Despite drawing on her own experiences, Mandy says the script was so beautifully written that she didn’t have to heavily research her character. She did, however, call upon Youtube to prepare for an emotional birthing scene. “I definitely watched a few birthing videos to familiarise myself, because I haven’t had kids. But after watching one or two of those videos I was like, ‘I got it, I’m done. I do not need to see any more of those!’” she laughs. As for her future plans, Mandy intends to ride the wave of her reignited fame. “It’s wonderful to have a job I’m so endlessly grateful for. It seems to mean as much to me as it does to other people – that’s a new thing! “I think it’s totally worth it to have gone through some of the disappointments that I’ve been through in the past few years. I would go through it all again to end up here,” she says.