Warm Milo ‘America’s Dad’
Milo Ventimiglia tells Yvonne Villarreal about the joys of being one of TV’s bestloved fathers.
As flawed-but-nearly-perfect patriarch Jack Pearson on This Is Us, Ventimiglia has joined the roster of TV’s most beloved dads. So beloved, in fact, that the character’s death, revealed in the show’s debut season, and the mystery surrounding it, kindled the question, ‘‘How did Jack die?’’ It quickly became a pop culture phenomenon rife with conspiracy theories.
The actor – who up until now was best known for his breakout roles as Jess Mariano, the moody bad-boy boyfriend to Rory in
Gilmore Girls, and Peter Petrelli, the medical caregiver with superhuman powers in Heroes –is very much like the genial, family man-type character he currently portrays. A floor-to-ceiling photo collage of friends and family lines a wall in his kitchen. He built part of his backyard patio with his father, Peter — their names are inscribed in the concrete footings. And as a hobbyist photographer — nearly every drawer in his office is a warehouse for lenses, film, etc. — he is known to take pictures, whether on set or in life, and gift them as keepsakes.
Ask Ventimiglia in what ways he’s most like Jack and he’ll start off with their differences. ‘‘I’m not an alcoholic, so I don’t think I’m like him in that way,’’ he says. ‘‘My parents didn’t drink, and it was never anything I was raised around, so it just, it never factored into my life ... How we’re alike? I’d like to think I care about the people I love, like Jack does.’’
But more than living up to a fictional character, Ventimiglia is trying to fill the shoes of his parents — his mother, Carol, a retired teacher, and his father, Peter, a Vietnam veteran who was in the printing business before he retired.
‘‘I still want to be my dad,’’ he says, flashing his signature crooked smile. ‘‘Growing up, my father represented this person of strength, of character. I saw not only the way he would talk to other people and his family but also how people would talk about him. People love my father — people love my mother. For me, it’s always been, ‘I want to live up to that’.’’
Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of Gilmore Girls and a longtime friend, can attest that he does — and not simply because he’s the one who persuaded her to stop consuming energy drinks.
‘‘If you know Milo the way I know Milo — I always say that I could never have kids, because I could never be guaranteed that they would turn out to be Milo,’’ says Palladino, who sees Ventimiglia more frequently on the red carpet as of late, thanks to her new Amazon series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
‘‘He’s always been such a stand-up guy. He’s so kind. He’s so thoughtful of everybody and so gracious to his co-actors and his crew. He takes his work extremely seriously without taking himself extremely seriously.’’
Mandy Moore, who plays Jack’s wife, Rebecca, on This Is Us, says Ventimiglia is Peak Dad in the little moments. She offers a time, before production on the first season had begun, when the two were set to make a press appearance and a strap on her shoe broke.
‘‘He pulled out a pocket knife and, like, MacGyver-ed the thing and was able to tie the piece back on on my foot and made the shoe work,’’ she says by phone. ‘‘He’s that guy.’’
Ventimiglia’s road to becoming America’s TV dad has been a winding one, starting at age 8 — the age he knew he wanted to be an actor. Growing up in Anaheim, Ventimiglia would put on plays with his two sisters in the family living room — he recalls coming up with plays inspired by the 19th century children’s novel The Water Babies.
‘‘I remember watching the Academy Awards with my mom and dad as a kid and seeing the acting clips [and] thinking, ‘That’s what I want to do’,’’ he says. ‘‘But I didn’t understand that it could be a career. I just knew I wanted to do it.’’
Bit parts on TV shows such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Saved by the Bell: The New Class eventually led to bigger roles, but in between there were moments in which he grew disenchanted with Hollywood. Ventimiglia had just come off the sci-fi thriller The
Whispers, which was cancelled after one season in 2015, and was reassessing what he wanted ‘‘out of going into my 40s, as an actor, as a man. I pulled my foot off the gas a little bit and backed off and re-engaged with life’’.
By October, the script for This Is Us turned things around. ‘‘When Milo first came in to meet with us, I knew instantly that that was the guy,’’ show creator Dan Fogelman says.
‘‘It just made perfect sense,’’ Fogelman adds, ‘‘that, ‘Oh, yes, he is the patriarch of this family’. This young man who would grow into an adult man who would bring a certain kind of masculinity and old-school dad to the part, but in a fresh and exciting new way. And look, there’s no mystery if you don’t care about this guy. And people do.’’
Writer and producer Bryan Fuller, who worked with Ventimiglia on Heroes, isn’t surprised in the least that the actor, who isn’t married and doesn’t have kids in real life, has become America’s dad.
‘‘It is no wonder. The warmth and accessibility he brought to many of his earlier roles has transformed into something nurturing and strong. In many ways, Milo’s evolution as an actor parallels his evolution as a human being. A good guy that has grown into a good man.’’
Ventimiglia, who also splits his time producing projects with his longtime producing partner Russ Cundiff via their Divide Pictures company, is now eager to move on to other aspects of Jack.
‘‘I feel like I’ve only been with this man a short period of time,’’ he says. ‘‘We’ve seen maybe 32 hours’ worth of Jack’s life ... I still feel like there’s a lot we don’t know about him — getting into his thoughts, into his heart, into his daily struggles as a human being. Then again, will we ever really know what the inside of Jack is? Because he mostly only reflects the positive.’’
Contemplating all that’s to come also gets Ventimiglia wondering what Jack would be like today, at age 74.
‘‘He’d be in love with those grandkids and he’d be doing something with houses – something creative,’’ Ventimiglia says. ‘‘And he’d be engaging with his adult children. I do wonder, though, if those lessons that his kids learned by only having Jack for a period of time – if they would have been lost if he was still around. The ‘what ifs’ can trip you up.’’ – Los Angeles Times
Season 2 of This is Us begins screening on TVNZ2 at 9.45pm tomorrow. It will also screen on Thursday nights.