LOCAL TIES
Hit drama ‘This Is Us’ has Pittsburgh connections
THOLLYWOOD his isn’t the first time a TV show has tried to replicate Pittsburgh in Los Angeles, but NBC’s “This Is Us” (9 p.m. Tuesday, WPXITV) may be the most high-profile series to date to attempt to get Pittsburgh right from 2,400 miles away.
“This Is Us,” the breakout drama of the 201617 TV season, has the added challenge of getting right Pittsburgh of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. That wasn’t an issue for recent Pittsburgh-set dramas such as CBS’s “The Guardian” (2001-04) and “Three Rivers” (2009-10) and TNT’s “Heartland” (2007).
“We do the best we can,” said “This Is Us” creator Dan Fogelman, who lived in Bethel Park until his family moved to New Jersey when he was 7. But viewers shouldn’t expect a Matthew Weiner, “Mad Men”-level of historic accuracy even as “This Is Us” manages some callbacks out of Pittsburgh history, including a bar named Froggy’s in an episode last fall, named after the real Downtown Froggy’s that closed in 2003.
“We have to make double and sometimes triple the amount of episodes these cable shows have to make, and we make it at half the budget,” Mr. Fogelman said. “It’s really a time factor if we miss a little detail or if it’s just too expensive to get some period stuff correct.”
The story of the Pearson family is told in multiple time periods, and “This Is Us” most frequently slips between scenes of “the Big Three” adult Pearson siblings — Randall (Sterling K. Brown), Kevin (Justin Hartley) and Kate (Chrissy Metz) — in present-day New Jersey or New York and their parents, Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore), in Pittsburgh in the past. The show has a habit of surprising viewers with twists, something that was part of the pilot and has continued through the first season, including the revelation that Jack died at some point and Rebecca then married
Jack’s best friend, Miguel (Jon Huertas).
“Something we play with inside the show is that life will surprise you a little bit, and we try and attack it as writers,” Mr. Fogelman said. “I know the history of this family. I wrote out the history of the family for [the cast]. There [are] no real surprises for us. … It’s not a big surprise to say a young woman wound up with a different husband many years down the line. What’s surprising for the audience is the order in which we choose to tell the story.”
Given the Pittsburgh setting, Mr. Fogelman said he’s heard from folks who knew his family when he lived in Bethel Park.
“Someone will see a name or hear a line and attribute it to something somebody said to my mother when I was 7,” he said, adding that making the Pearsons a “Steelers family” also engages viewers. “The [Pittsburgh] sports community is so fantastic online, so many people respond so strongly anytime we bring up the Steelers.”
Including, it turns out, members of the Steelers organization.
“I talked to one of the people in the ownership, and the team has reached out, and we may actually take the cast up there at some point next year and have them do the Terrible Towel thing with the team, leading them out onto the field or something,” Mr. Fogelman said. “I’m a die-hard New York Giants fan, but I hold a candle for the Steelers because as a little boy growing up in Pittsburgh, I drew countless pictures of Terry Bradshaw and Franco Harris. Lynn Swann was my hero.”
Devil is in the details
Mr. Fogelman acknowledged also hearing from Pittsburgh viewers on Twitter about small details the show has gotten wrong, including a January episode with “something about the way alcohol was being sold back in 1979.”
It wasn’t just Twitter users who had that reaction. “This Is Us” viewers Toni Moore of Ross and Sheila Howe of New Castle also cried foul when Rebecca was shown at a liquor store that also sold Twinkies and banana muffins.
“No liquor stores in Pennsylvania sell snacks along with liquor,” Ms. Howe said. “I realize they do take literary license, but they should be accurate on some things.”
“They could just as easily have made it a corner market and retained their authenticity,” Ms. Moore added.
Mr. Fogelman isn’t the only person with Pittsburgh ties working on “This Is Us.” Writer Kay Oyegun is a 2010 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, where she studied journalism, business and film.
During my January visit to the show’s set, cinematographer Yasu Tanida and first camera assistant Sean O’Shea, sporting a “Pixburgh” hat, were quick to point out their Pittsburgh bona fides: Both men worked on A&E’s 2014 shotin-Pittsburgh drama “Those Who Kill.”
And “This Is Us” set decorator Beth Wooke lived in Highland Park until moving to Arizona at age 10, but she still has a stepfather, Les Ainsman (president of Consumer Fresh Produce in the Strip District), and other relatives in Pittsburgh.
Ms. Wooke acknowledged there was “so much discussion that there were no snacks in liquor stores” but she said the plot took priority.
“It’s more about the story and driving the story forward,” she said. “We had to have something she could walk to. It’s not about what’s right, it was about the story. I do get fixated on little details like that and they drive me crazy but I just have to hope only Pittsburghers know those things.”
This week’s episode
It’s a crisp but sunny January day when “This Is Us” stars Mr. Brown as Randall and Ron Cephas Jones, who play’s Randall’s biological father, William, film a humorous scene from this week’s episode that focuses on the pair, who take a road trip to Memphis, where William grew up.
In the scene shot on Stage 11, the two knock on the door of a house where William once lived and the surprised homeowners let them in so William can look around. What he does next is unexpected and makes Randall and the current homeowners uncomfortable, leading Mr. Brown, an Emmy winner last year for his role as Christopher Darden in FX’s “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story,” to stammer his way through one of Randall’s amusingly discombobulated moments.
“Oookay, we’ll be getting out of your hair now,” Randall tells the homeowners near the end of one take. “That was weird for me. I’m so sorry!”
Mr. Brown said he was drawn to “This Is Us” for many reasons, including Randall’s soul and storyline.
“I have a very strong connection to my dad, who I lost when I was 10, so stories about fathers and sons resonate,” he said. “To be 36 and seeking out a father figure after having lost his adoptive dad and looking to connect with his biological father, there is something special about that to me, specifically, because I think about what life would be like if I had my dad.”
Season’s end
“This Is Us,” already renewed for seasons two and three, will wrap its first season on March 14, and Mr. Fogelman said in the latter part of the season the Pittsburgh story will focus more on the three Pearson kids as teens in the mid-1990s. (The specific years the show is set in have mutated a bit since its beginning, but now the series has pretty much set in stone that the kids were born in 1980 and viewers have also seen them in the late 1980s, in 1990 and as teens in the mid-’90s.)
“This Is Us” location manager Duffy Taylor said he was scouting filming locations with production designer Gary Frutkoff when they stumbled upon a home in South Pasadena, about 12 miles northeast of the show’s Paramount Pictures home base. The home’s exterior is used as Jack and Rebecca's Bethel Park home.
“Dan stated he wanted something very blue collar that wasn’t fancy,” Mr. Frutkoff said. “Then you have to consider the architecture and the materials used. The Pittsburgh house we found has no palm trees around it, and it’s made out of old asbestos shingle [siding], which is rare anywhere now.”
Ah, yes, the devilish palm trees. Sometimes they will be digitally removed from a shot; other times, they’re disguised.
“If a palm tree trunk is right in the shot, we’ll cover it with faux bark, attached in the back away from the camera, and nobody knows,” Mr. Frutkoff said.
Mr. Taylor said finding areas of Los Angeles that can double as Pittsburgh is challenging. Some scenes are filmed on the Paramount backlot — for a driving scene of William on a Pittsburgh bus, a bus circled the backlot cityscape facades over and over — others are in slivers of L.A. that are free of modern influence. Or if there is, say, a modern parking meter, Mr. Taylor has it removed.
“Los Angeles is very filmfriendly, and they have a department within the city that handles parking meter removal,” he said. “It’s a cost and a little bit of a hassle, but it’s something we do.”
Decorating the house
While some scenes set in period Pittsburgh have been filmed on location, often those scenes take place indoors.
“Our episodes have wound up being inside more in that storyline because the stories involve a family, and most family stories take place inside of a home,” Mr. Fogelman said. “To be period Pittsburgh it needs to be a big part of the story because it’s a huge expense and challenge on a costume level and production design level, so it has to be a big enough part of the story and not just one scene.”
To get the house interiors right, Ms. Wooke, the set decorator, called up her aunt and uncle, Pittsburghers Meryl and David Ainsman, who provided photos of their home and children in the 1980s for Ms. Wooke to use as references when decorating Jack and Rebecca’s house.
“When I got the script, I felt like I knew Rebecca and Jack, that I’d been in a bar similar to Froggy’s,” Ms. Wooke said. “I can go through old family photos and find references to what kind of furniture is appropriate. I wasn’t intimidated at all about going back in time because I had lived it. I just have to go shopping now and find it all.”
Ms. Wooke said watching the show has become “a kick” for her aunt.
“The kitchen chairs we use are the same ones she had in 1986,” Ms. Wooke said. “My aunt is a huge fan of ‘This Is Us.’ She called me asking if Toby was alive [after the character’s hospitalization in the Christmas episode].”
(Just to show how Pittsburgh really is at the center of everything, a location scout for “Those Who Kill” approached Meryl and David Ainsman about using their Shady Avenue home as the home of Chloe Sevigny’s judge stepfather in that series, so the Ainsmans called their niece who connected them with a location manager in Baltimore who helped them navigate renting their home to the “Those Who Kill” production company.)
While “This Is Us” tries to use Pittsburgh details every now and then, Ms. Wooke said the goal is to feel like Pittsburgh but not necessarily be literal. She’s thought about trying to include references to Mineo’s Pizza or Eat’n Park, but she’s resisted. Getting too specific can also result in legal headaches.
“We always have to clear the name [legally] … so it doesn’t infringe on anything,” said Mr. Frutkoff, the production designer. Froggy’s cleared easily because it’s no longer in business.
Getting clearances for Pittsburgh sports memorabilia is also necessary. Mr. Frutkoff said the production has to get clearance from the NFL on a case-by-case basis, so a Steelers logo won’t be on permanent display on the set
“I wanted to put a football pennant in the boys’ room, and they cleared it for one episode,” Ms. Wooke said. “Everyone wants to make sure you’re not using their image or brand negatively.”
Of course, now that “This Is Us” has become a known quantity and a hit, Ms. Wooke said she expects securing such permissions will become easier.
“Someone will see a name or hear a line and attribute it to something somebody said to my mother when I was 7.” — Dan Fogelman, “This Is Us” creator and former Pittsburgher