“It's hard ending something you love,” This Is Us creator and executive producer Dan Fogelman said during a TCA press conference. The sixth and final season of the hit drama on NBC from 20th Television resumes on February 22nd, with the final episode scheduled for Tuesday, May 24th at 9/8c. “If we could all snap our fingers and just magically have more of this, we probably would. But this has very much been the plan. We had two 3-season pickups intentionally.” The creator shared that he had sketched a roadmap for the show that would last for six seasons and he’s stuck to that plan. “It's not because we don't have any more story to tell. It's because we exactly planned it to go this way. And so we're on a five-year path, and to suddenly pivot and add more because we don't want it to end, it wouldn't be quite responsible to the show and what we have planned and it would start becoming something else.”
(Joe Pugliese/NBC)
Joined by members of the cast, the team reflected back on the show’s success, their favorite memories, and how hard it’s going to be to say goodbye. “I had a lot of confidence in this group of fine and talented actors,” Milo Ventimiglia shared about his faith in the show from the start. “I had a lot of confidence in Dan Fogelman and the fine and talented writers that he assembled. We've got a wonderful crew, and we have wonderful people who are incredibly talented, that are doing their best in coming together. Of course, it's going to succeed. I knew it was going to be a success and people were going to be able to connect to it.”
“It's so hard to distill down six seasons of just incredible moments in each and every episode,” revealed Mandy Moore. “It's such a gift to be a part of this show. It's such a gift to go to work every day and tell these stories and get to recite these words. It's never lost on us, and it's especially not lost on me, as we start to close out the show. I'm like, OK, I just want to be fully present.”
“I think I'm feeling it sooner,” Susan Kelechi Watson shared. “I remember thinking, gosh, I'm probably not going to feel it until Episode 616, you know. I think everything feels fine now. We've been doing some very special episodes that involved some intricacies, and it took a while to shoot, two months. And we wrapped this sort of two-month series. And I remember watching Mandy and Jon [Huertas] walk out of Stage 31. They're just walking to the van, and something hit me. Like, oh, my gosh. I'm not going to see them walk to the van.” The actress confessed to capturing the moment on her phone to look back on later. “The leaving of it now, the emotion behind that is starting to be really real.”
As strong as the emotions are behind the scenes, the actors still have work to do to wrap the series, which promises many highlights. “You know the cast and you know the caliber of actor that you're going to be dealing with,” Justin Hartley said of his costars, saying that he gets excited to see what they do with a scene when he reads it. “You read them and you go, I cannot wait to see what this actor does with this. And you're impressed every single time, but you're not surprised. It's just, it's impressive. And it's five or it's six years now of just pedal to the metal, 100 percent every single time… It's just an honor and privilege to watch what these people do with their work and how seriously they take it.”
As it stands right now, This Is Us will wrap up the story of the Pearson family on May 24th, but when asked about a potential movie or special down the road, Dan Fogelman had this to say. “I say no to nothing. I'm very aware that a midlife crisis is right around the corner for me and that whatever I do next I'm going to hate in comparison to this show and these actors. So I say no to nothing. I suspect that these [actors] are going to be flooding your TV screens and movie screens for years to come. I think they're both in front of and behind the camera, as it turns out, because they're all becoming beautiful writers and directors and producers as we speak. So I suspect when I want to do something again for This Is Us with these guys, they'll all be very busy and winning awards and Emmys and Oscars.”
New episodes of This Is Us air Tuesdays at 9/8c on NBC.