‘This Is Us’: Mandy Moore Reveals Some Finale Scenes Were Shot Years Ago
Ahead of the This Is Us series finale on Tuesday, May 24, Mandy Moore has revealed that there are multiple scenes in the show’s final episode that were filmed years ago.
Speaking to Deadline on the red carpet for the series finale celebration on Sunday, Moore said, “To be honest, a lot of what is in the finale for Milo [Ventimiglia] and I was filmed years ago. So, I don’t even remember what it was. We had a couple of things we shot for this that I’m excited to see.”
Moore’s character, Rebecca Pearson, bowed out in last week’s emotional episode, where she was reunited in the afterlife with her late husband, Jack Pearson (Ventimiglia). The pair will appear in the upcoming finale, with the show’s creator Dan Fogelman confirming that planning for the last episode began four years ago. “It’s been a long journey to get here,” Fogelman told Deadline.
“I read the [finale] script and I’m excited to see everyone else’s work,” Moore added. “I think it’s really beautiful. In my own selfish way — maybe because my character passed on in the last episode — I felt like last week was the finale, and this one feels more like an epilogue in a way. I think it’s a really beautiful way to tie things all together and tie them up in a very satisfactory fashion.”
Moore also spoke of the difficulty of filming the penultimate episode and her death scene. “It really packed an emotional punch, for me,” she said. “Reading the script, every time I read it… I had such an emotional response that I was really worried about how I was going to feel once I got on set. But once I got a little bit of the initial tears out of the way, it was fine. I was like, ‘We know how to do this, we’ve done 105 episodes. It’s fine.'”
Sharing his own thoughts on the emotionally intense penultimate episode, Ventimiglia said, “I was happy to end the show with Mandy in a scene together because that’s how we started it. It felt good; it felt accomplished. It felt like we’d been given this opportunity to close things out respectfully, wholeheartedly for the characters. I was grateful.”
This Is Us, Series Finale, Tuesday, May 24, 9/8c, NBC
