Welcome back to a very, very special episode of. That was us.

Yeah.

I'm Mandy Moore.

I'm Chris Sullivan.

I'm Sterling Brown. You can put the k in there if you want to. It's all good.

I'll do it.

Always, always gotta add the k. Always.

Gotta add the k. We have a. It's a special episode because today we have a special guest. We're not gonna be discussing any one particular episode of the show, but we are gonna be talking to the creator of the show, mister Dan Fogle.

The man. The myth. The legend.

The legend. Spoiler alert. We will discuss, like, all seasons to a certain extent. So if you haven't watched everything, you can come back to this episode.

When you have, listen at your discretion. At your discretion.

There you go.

Awesome.

So without further ado, let's get into it with Dan.

Let's get into it.

Are we ready to.

We're rolling.

Let's go. All right, great.

We're rolling. All right. So today, welcome back, everyone, to that was us. We're here with the lovely Amanda Lee Moore. My man, Christopher Sullivan. I'm Sterling Brown. And we have a special guest today.

Very special.

Yes.

The creator and showrunner of this is us, Mister Dan Fogelman.

Stop, everyone.

Welcome, sir. Welcome. And listen. Welcome. We decided we're gonna do just a special standalone episode. We're not gonna talk about any one particular episode of the show, but just talk to Dan about his creative process, how this came to him, how he came to this business, and, like, what this sort of meant for him, this moment of creating this particular show. Dan, first of all, how you doing today?

I'm good, Stoney. First of all, thank you for having us to your home. I've never been invited. It's exactly how I picture it.

I thought so.

Yeah, it's right. It's very right for you.

It's cozy.

You have baby pictures of Chris and I. It's very sweet of you.

My grandmother's like a white woman.

Your grandmother?

Yeah.

Yeah.

She liked white women too.

I'm good. I've got a runny nose, but I am good otherwise.

Okay. We're glad to hear it. It's a little rainy out here in Southern California today. Everybody made it here safe and sound.

Yes, indeed.

Does anybody wanna ask the first question? I feel like I just start talking.

I love when you start talking. You need to take the lead.

All right, I'll just say this. What was the inspiration for the show, big dog? How'd it come to you?

I mean, it was originally. I mean, I've talked about it a little bit. It was originally a movie, right. I was starting to write it as a film because I think I was in a bit of a transition point in my career, in my life. I was trying to figure out what I was gonna do next, I think a little bit. My mom had passed away a couple years earlier, and I was debating having kids. All my friends were having kids. I'm 48 now, so back then, I was, like, 38.

Yeah. Were you 38 or were you 37?

I think I was 37.

Okay, you're 37. You'll know what I'm saying.

When I started writing it. When I started writing it, I was, like, 36 and. Yeah, and I started writing a movie about. I started thinking about how my friends were all in such different places in their lives at the roundabout age I was, which at the time was 36. 37. Some of my friends were married with, like, grown children, like, 10, 12, 13 year old kids. But then I had myself. I was like. I was on the cusp of getting engaged to Kate. I had lost my mom. Other friends had lost all their parents. Other friends had had cancer. I had a friend who passed away or was sick with cancer. So I was like, oh, wow. It's interesting that we could all be, hypothetically the same age or literally born on the same day and be leading such different lives. And I think that was kind of the starting point. And then I thought to myself, oh, that's kind of a cool twist. What if you thought that was the story you were telling, but it was actually the story of a couple of multiple birth type children. At the time when I was writing the movie, there were about seven or eight.

It was like, octuplets or sextuplets or whatever that's called. So it was kind of a love actually story, finding all these different people born on different things.

It sounds like the Wachowski sisters, that Sci-Fi thing they had on Netflix, where they all sort of shared the same brain.

Anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was it. I had an english woman in the show. I thought one person moved to England and got an accent that would be hiding it. Sure. One character's black, one character's to otherwise white people, so you would never see that they're all potentially related and grew up in the same hall. And then I got, like, 60, 70 pages in, and it just was not working. I was like, this doesn't work. It feels like it exists just to get to a surprise. And that's the end. And I just kind of put it in a drawer which I had not done before. And then that. So that was the start.

Yeah.

And then. Yeah. And then I was. I was doing other stuff I made. I had had a bad run of television experiences where shows I made were not quite cutting through. They were getting canceled.

But you were getting, like, first seasons usually, weren't you?

I had a couple of two season shows. I was at a different studio. They were just kind of like. I got screwed a couple of times on things. I had some big projects that weren't going. Some. It was just like. It wasn't quite. I was kind of going, should I go back primarily to film? I wasn't quite quite sure.

Okay.

And then I tell them about the.

Films that you've made, big guy. Go ahead and flex on them for a second.

Get the resume.

Yeah. I mean, we can flex on crazy, stupid love.

That's kind of it.

Well, Danny Collins.

Yeah.

What's the Santa Claus show? What's the.

Fred Claus?

Fred Claus. That's what I lead with. That's the one that goes on the tombstone.

This is the second pairing of you and Miss Amanda Lee because we did all together.

I wrote tangled. Yeah.

You wrote cars.

Life itself.

Life itself. My big, colossal failure.

Listen, let me take a little.

Come on.

That movie. Dan.

Yeah, I know.

This is gonna be.

Look him in the eye.

Look at me.

Don't make me cry. It changed my life. Rachel and I. Rachel and I saw a screening of it at Paramount and we both walked out of that theater. Different people. And it was. I love.

No, I remember.

I love that movie. I love that movie.

Well, yes, I read all that shit and then what did I do? So it was in a drawer. I made a new deal at a television studio and then I was like, I wonder if that could be a tv series. Something different. I'd primarily been doing half hours and I was like, I wonder if I could do something more in the line of what I normally write with this. And maybe part of what was fucking me up. Can I curse on this? Yeah, sure, go for it. But maybe part of what was messing me up was. Maybe part of what was messing me up was that I had needed to get to an ending and that was just the ending. That's kind of a fart. Like, they're all related. That's the end of the movie. And I kind of knew that. And so I was like, oh, if it's a series, it just kind of turns the whole thing on its head at the end and then you can make, like, a gazillion of them and follow these people. So I cut back the number of characters and focused on it. A family of three children in the family, and then I wrote it, and then it just kind of all took off from there.

I don't know anything about developing a tv show or writing a tv show, but you set yourself up for a high level of difficulty as far as storytelling goes. The number of twists and turns, the number of. We talked last week about the secrets that we had to. That we had to keep hold so that the thing could unfold in front of people. Maybe you can talk a little bit about the writers room. Cause Sterling brought it up last night. The timelines that you guys would keep to keep all of this stuff straight and to keep it moving in a direction that ended somewhere.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was all. It was a tremendous amount of work. It was.

Spoilers, possibly. So just, you know, we're talking about the whole show.

I don't think that I was conscious of it when I wrote the pilot. And, like, that became a bit of the narrative that, like, holy shit, this guy has a whole grand plan of six seasons of a television show. I just. I think that kind of started coming after I realized it was gonna be a thing. Once we started shooting it and making it, I was like, oh, I better figure out what we're doing. So I had a lot of thoughts and, like, of the big picture shape of the show. It's gonna end with the death of somebody.

I told them all that.

You just cut it out. But I kinda knew the big picture shape and the jack stuff and. But, no, I mean, then it just takes on a life of its own, and you start putting those timelines. I had all these incredible writers. The first couple of weeks of that writer's room was probably, like, the most exciting time in my career, creatively. Yeah, it was like, really, like, it was just, like, a bunch of people. It was primarily young women in the room. Not young, like ten, but, like, 30 year old women.

Fifth graders.

Yeah, it was fresh ideas.

Fresh ideas. Yeah, yeah.

It was just really exciting. Everybody was, like, telling their primal origin stories, and we were working them into the show, and that's where the big picture of the show started really developing. And I'd go, oh, I like that. Ooh, some person would tell a story of their life, and everybody would start crying, oh, yeah, let's do that. And so we kind of picked and chose, and then over the course of that year and the next year, really, the timeline really developed that way.

Were they all seasoned tv people? Or, I know Becca. Becca was a playwright, or it still is a playwright.

It was Jess and I, my producing partner, I was like, I really want to get great writers and people that aren't necessarily all just television writers. So, yeah, we had. I mean, I hired KJ, one of our writers. She was an established television writer, like, well, well regarded. But I hired her off a play she had written. Yeah, same with Becca. It was just. It was a hodgepodge of people from all different kind of walks of lives and experiences, and that kept, you know, you'd lose writers as you go. People kind of leave and go off to do other things, and you bring in news, but there was always kind of a wide, like, swath of people in that room. And it wasn't just, like, the obvious thing to say would be like, oh, it was. Whether it was diverse or whatnot, it was just. It was also just. People had a lot of different life experiences there. There weren't a lot of people who, like, had the same, like, oh, yeah, that's exactly like my childhood. It was a lot of different childhoods. And I think that was really kind of foundational as well.

I think as we've been discussing the show, too, and going back and re watching it, we're just astounded by so many things. But something that's really struck me is just how fully realized the show is from the beginning. Did you know that you didn't want to tell the story linearly, that you wanted to sort of play with time in that way and jump around?

That I knew.

Okay.

It's a weird one, like, when people ask. Cause, like, I don't think there was such intensive planning. I mean, I think part of what you're. What you see when you watch the show as a whole, if you, like, the show is like, it was meticulous. And all the people who were writing on it and then the people who were acting in it afterwards, and all the. We took it so seriously. Like, it was as if the world depended on us making sure that we got every connective piece of tissue to it when it was really, you know, and we very rarely let something slide. You know what I mean? It was like. And so there was, like, a meticulous, like, nature of, like, is this working? Does this work? Does this all connect? That it almost became, like, obsessive for a group of ten people who were writing the television show. And I think you feel that.

Yeah, we talked about that last week about how that attention to detail, in my opinion, made the audience feel safe, feel great, safe and considered. And that, like, even though this is gonna be hard, there's gonna be a lot of hard things that we talk about that, like, the people creating the show are being that detailed and being that considered with these things.

I think what happened, honestly, in retrospect, I had a couple of big picture things. I knew. I knew I wanted the show to be challenging but accessible in the way it played with time. I had always said to them, like, in the second episode, we're gonna jump all the way back with Mandy and Milo and you're not gonna be seeing the same people that you're gonna see them in crisis, you know what I mean? Eight years later, and those little babies that are being born are gonna be now eight year old kids. And that's, like, big jump in network television. Like, that was a big thing. And so I knew that kind of stuff. I think the show took such, like, that first year when the show took hold in, like, the zeitgeist, it was all the people working on it. And I'm like, the writers particularly, but also, I think even the actors, it's why everybody enjoyed it so much, as opposed to sometimes when people miss the enjoyment. I think nobody had experienced that level of insanity in this field. Like, mandy, you've experienced it. And Sterling was just coming off winning, winning an Emmy.

But it was, like, the popular thing in television when you're just the show that everybody's watching. And I think suddenly we were like, oh, shit, we better really figure out.

Rehook for you because you're a delightfully neurotic human being and you sort of try to play it under. But when did it feel like, oh.

Snap, we're gonna be around for a while?

I knew that. I mean, I'd been a part of really big things, right? Like, I'd done animated Pixar cars, right? And I'd done stuff like that had kind of broken through in different ways, whether it was crazy stupid love or tangled or. And I'd also been around big movie stars like Streisand and Pacino and all these guys. So I kind of, like, knew what it. But I knew what the. I knew what the. I knew what big things felt like a little bit. But, like, when I was watching it film, I was like, holy shit, this is gonna be something big. I just had a feeling. I never get that from the pilot, from filming the pilot. I knew, like, I was like, this is gonna be very good. And I think it might. And then we started to get all those bellwether signs like, the trailer busting out like that. I remember very vividly, like, being. They'd made a trailer before we got announced at up fronts. And I noticed I was screening it for people and I've told the story a lot, but people were. I was not. I never thought that the show would be crying and that would be a narrative about the show.

Neither did I. I never thought that. I actually thought it was funnier than it was like, same. Me too.

I agree.

You mentioned that a lot. Doesn't get credit for the levity that it.

But people, the viewers latch onto that because it makes them feel some.

I think it's part of why they're able to, like, those who watch the show and enjoy that type of thing, they let go because, like, you're not just. You're pounding them, but there's also laughter and store some other storylines within the heavier stuff and whatnot. So. But yeah, I was screening it for people. Cause we had a year or so. We filmed it so early. We had quite some time before. Not a year, but. But not the normal amount of time from filming to pickup.

Sure.

And I would screen it for people and people were having really severe reactions. I had a dvd of it and I would like, once in a while, like my buddies, so analog. My buddies would be over, like my house in the Hollywood hills and my old bachelor pad that Kate was making me move out of, like, breathing on.

It, wiping out your shirt.

They would come over and they would come over to watch football. And then I would like, I remember once vividly my buddy Josh and Alex, who subsequently passed away, but they came over for watch football. I was like, hey, do you guys want to see that thing I was working on for NBC? It ended. And my buddy Josh, we just finished watching 8 hours of football and drinking unbelievable amounts of whiskey and bourbon and stuff. But Josh, it was just dead quiet. And then Josh got up and he excused himself and went outside. And he was like, really? They were emotional. And I was like, huh, this is odd. And I just kept noticing that. I thought people were going to be like, holy shit, that's a great twist and feel something. But then the emotion, the trailer came out and people were having that reaction just to the materials and the actors without knowing.

That's what I mean. Like, it was. What was it? 70 million views?

Yeah, it was this. I went to New York for the up fronts and Jennifer Salkey, who is the president, is now the president of Amazon, but was the president of NBC at the time. She called me and I was in a taxi in New York going to the up fronts. And she said, have you heard what's happening with the trailer? And I was like, what? What? Truth be told, I thought the trailer was like, I had nothing to do with the trailer. I'd been very involved in the naming of the show and how it would be marketing. I had strong opinions and I thought the trailer was good. And I was like. She was like, do you see what's going on with the trailer? And I was like, no. And she's like, it's going berserk. And I was like, oh. And so we had all those signs. And then you could just tell, like the night we launched, I mean, I was telling Sterling didn't remember it, but like everything, like, sterling won the Emmy for Darden on either Sunday or Monday night. The emmys were. And we aired the following Tuesday. Like one or two days later.

You were at that mexican restaurant with us, like live tweeting the premiere a day or two days after you won the Emmy. No, come on.

You had the Emmy there.

Yeah, if it wasn't one or two days later, it was the week after. But it was. So there was just a lot of shit that was lining up. And then it aired and the numbers were really big. And then it just kept growing upon itself. And I remember going to Thanksgiving to go see my family. And it was around the time the 8th episode was airing and Milo was doing the push ups with Lonnie on his back. And I remember on the plane, it was one of those visuals of every tv on the plane felt like it was on the show. And then I got there and people were in the hotel. It was right as it was getting towards information about Jack. It was the most we were ever in the zeitgeist, right in that period. And like, I remember it was on in the hotel. I was checking into somehow, faintly, or maybe at one day, the next week at the hotel, because I was staying there for a week. And like, people at the desk were looking up at the. And I was like, oh, wow, we're really. This is like quite a thing.

So crazy.

Yeah, it was like I was, I just remember around that first eight episodes, seven episodes of the show, I was like, it took a month or two. And I was like, wow, man, I can't even mention that I work on the show without people like going, oh, yeah. Like, even if they weren't watching it, it just, everybody knew about it at that moment.

It was one of the few things where people. I don't know how this happened. Maybe you can speak to, like, that timing that people were watching it in real time. It's like one of the last shows.

Yeah, sure.

Game of Thrones, where people were like, oh, Sunday night, oh, Tuesday night appointment television, it's gonna happen. Like, why? What is it about the time in which it came out into the world? Do you think that allowed it to sort of latch on the way that it. It did?

I really don't know. They used to ask me that all the time, and they would always refer it to Trump and the political environment of the world. I just, like, I honestly, I think. I don't know. I always pointed at you guys in the cow.

I spoke to the divisiveness of the world, and it is something that seemed to. We could all agree that we love our family.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? And that was something that for, like, an hour, you like, oh, it felt unifying in a very divisive way, I thought.

I think that's a good way. I always thought that was a way of saying it was like that, you know, people that you could be red in the face, screaming at because they're so opposite who you are as a person. Like, if you saw that person, just, like, when their husband or when they were having a baby or when they were at a parent's funeral, like, it's very. We're all kind of in the same. You wouldn't hate the person in that moment. And so maybe there's something unifying about these family shows that once in a while, a show comes along at the right time and just catches people, and maybe the time was right for it. I think it was. The cast was just so appealing, and I think, like, I don't know. I think the mystery of the first season, I always felt like there was a lot that always confused me. Cause I always thought Parenthood was such a great show, and Friday Night Lights, a lot of stuff Jason Katims had done in this space. And there was a lot of concern that the show would be small, and we don't want it to feel like those shows, which hadn't, like, in their mind's eyes, it wasn't one particular person, but had felt smaller for some reason that I didn't quite understand.

But I did always think that the mystery of the patriarch's death would give people some red meat to go along with a family dramedy, that, like, you're pulling people through something with the story, as they're also really caring about the characters and the other arcs and the marriages and the adoption stories and the romances. But I think that did have a part of pulling us into the zeitgeist as well. Cause that's when it started. Like, Chrissy pulled out that urn in the fifth, fifth five. And that was a moment where, like. And it was also, like, just the Miguel showing up at the end of two, which I knew after the pilot, we needed a big twist at the end of two, and say, oh, she married. What happened to the dad? And then when she pulls out the urine, says, he's dead. And, you know, oh, I'm living in a timeframe with two time frames, with kids. At what point will he die? And that gave it, I think, a propeller.

Yeah.

I mean, it makes it feel like the kind of in your face nature of mortality.

Right.

Pulls the audience towards something that they inherently. We all know it's coming.

Right.

But now it's in your face. And it also kind of, in a way, says to the audience, we're gonna. We will take care of you, but anything. Anything goes here.

Yeah.

Like, five episodes in, we're gonna kill one of your favorite characters.

Yeah.

And you're not gonna know why for.

A very long time.

And so it, like, propels people's interest in what's gonna happen, which is life, too. The anticipation of what's next.

I think that's right. I mean, I think that helped. I think it was like a little magic trick we had inside of those first couple seasons of the show, which was like. And why people. There was an urgency. Like, shows have. Game of Thrones had urgency to see it in real time, because someone was gonna die. Right. At its best. When Sex and the City was one of those shows, primarily for a different audience, it was like, who is she gonna want? There's a question. Right? There's a question.

That's our next rewatch.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's gonna. That's gonna go nuts.

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I want to talk a little bit about your writing process because I think you approach things a little bit different than a lot of writers I know. You seem to just put pen to paper and start writing. You don't outline things beforehand. You're like, it's easy if I just write it and show it to people because that's what you did with the potties. I wrote this thing you to take a look at it, not like, oh, I have a sketch of an idea of a thing that I want to get talk to me about. Why is that just easier for you? Has that always been your process?

Yeah, I mean part of it's just I'm untrained and lazy a little sometimes, but it's true. But yeah, I mean, I don't. So it's two parts. One is like on a business level. Like years ago I stopped, I said, I'm going to no longer sell pitch ideas or pitch a sketch of an idea because what happens is somebody will want to make it and then I will write it. But I have lost control of it already. Right? Like if they have notes, if they want to make it with a certain actor or certain director, I am not in control of it. It started at a younger point in my career when I didn't have as much of the control as I have now, where I'm less worried about that now because I know even if I, if I was to tell someone an idea, they were saying, we're going to pay you to go write it, I'd feel confident I could control it a little. When I was younger, I just watched things go astray a bunch of times on me. Not in a bad way. I was, I always was lucky enough to work with nice people, but like, I was not the person in control.

And sometimes they worked out like John and Glenn directed our pilot. Yeah, I wanted to direct crazy stupid love when I wrote crazy stupid love or I had that in my mind's eye, but I had never directed. These guys got it. They were absolutely, they made it. What it, you know, what it is. And sometimes it works more often than that. It didn't, you know, and so, but so, yeah, at a certain point earlier in my career with film and tv, I was like, I'm gonna write stuff, give people the script and say, this is what I want. I want Mandy to be in it. And if you don't like that, that's fine, but I'll find somebody else who wants to do it that way, or I won't do anything. So that's, like, the business side.

And.

I always recommend that to young writers. But it's coming. It comes from a place of, like, a little bit of privilege and a little bit of, like, you have to trust on betting yourself. Cause if you spend a year writing something that you don't get paid by, the end of the rainbow might be nobody wants it and you've wasted a year. And sometimes it's better to get, you know, have a career and you have a family and get paid to write something, even if it's gonna go in the shitter. And then you have to do the next thing. So it's a bouncing. But then, as a writer, I never have really outlined for myself very much, which is not good. It's worked out okay for you, but I wind up doing it in television series, even at the best. Like, as an example, like when we get to the Memphis episode of the first season of the show, I wrote that episode, but that was outlined like I was given. I was so busy at the time. I was writing so much during that first season, I was given by the writers room an outline of a story, like beat by beat.

Now I kind of dodge and weave through that. In television series, you wind up outlining quite a lot. That's the whole thing. Breaking the story. Cause you're doing it with a room. But when I'm kind of writing television series, at the start, you and I are doing a new one, like the first couple. I just write them.

Yeah.

And then I start figuring out as it gets deeper or so. Yeah. So I don't do a lot of outlining.

Here's. Here's my next question. Because you'll come up with things, and I think the writers room, they'll call them, like, dan storms or something like that, where something doesn't seem to, like, make.

Sense.

Something doesn't seem to make sense. So I'm gonna reference the paint. And I remember Dan was telling me, he's like, so Kevin does this thing where he paints before he, like, does it. He's like, it's hard to explain, but, like, it all makes sense and it'll be great. And I'll be like, all right, bro, whatever you say. Like, I'm like, painting. Kevin paints. Like, I remember the first time he said it to me, I was like, okay. And then you watch it and you're like, mother, how did. Like, it's so sort of like, it seems like it's gonna go left, but in your mind, you have such assuredness about, like, no, I know I'm gonna land. It's like, where does that come from?

I don't. The painting. That was a big breakthrough moment, though, for the show where I was like, we were in that. We were in that again, that. And that's that same episode where I believe Chrissy pulls out the urn. And so that was where, like, the show was hitting the zeitgeist. I was like, okay, like, what we need to. I was like, I want to tell, like, I want to say what the show's about. I think that was. There were a couple I wrote. Any showrunner writes a majority of their show, right? There can be a gazillion. That first year, I did a lot of writing, right. And then at a certain point, though, after the first, I think. I don't remember if I wrote the first three or four. But then at a certain point, you start turning over scripts to other writers and that's where you really start having to figure out, like, what is this thing? You know, I'm not writing everything word for word anymore. And that I remember, like, we were struggling on that part of the script and I was like, this is where. So I don't know. I don't know where the conference comes from.

I was like, I had this idea of, like, I want Kevin, the character who's not the one with the verbal skills, to speak to the big, grand philosophy of the show, to secretly have something inside of him. And I want him to try and express it to a little kid. And I started pitching it to the writers and it just kind of came out and they all were looking at me blankly. I was like, no, it's gonna work. Not all, but I was like, we'll do that.

And then you made them all watch you paint for, like, I don't know.

Why with this show particularly. And when I'm doing stuff that's good, hopefully on our new show that we're doing sterling. But, like, I can kind of see it in my head. I can see the scene.

Yeah.

And then I just kind of have to fill in the words a little bit. And then sometimes I can't get that. And then that's when things are not working. I was like, oh, I want him to say, this is us for the first time, in a surprising way. Like, not altogether, but like he says, I think this comes close. Yeah, I don't know. I just saw it. I could just see it, and then I wrote it, and sometimes I can't.

It's a balancing act that the show not only walks immediately, but continues through six seasons. And I've talked to a lot of people about this, walking right up to the line of heartfelt sincerity without tipping over into saccharine or overly sweet. You give something like that, and it is the writing, but it's also, like you said, who you give it to, Kevin. And the way justin delivers things, it's just incredible.

Well, I think it's a. And it's a balancing act, and it's like, in every moment, that's all I would monitor. And again, this show tipped from the very beginning. There's a segment of the television watching population that the show tipped too far into that sentimentality from the very beginning. It's just not for them. It's not where they live. And so it's kind of like the people who more have are radar, right. Which I find to be in the middle is like, where is it tipping past that? Would it have been too much a.

Challenge, like being that sincere? There's a place for sentimentality if you're actively engaged in relationship, if you're actively engaged with challenging yourself. And the show, I think the show, for a lot of people was like pushing them to go there within themselves, within their relationships, within their own families, even we talked about it. Even certain people who loved the show couldn't continue because it was tugging at things that were, for one reason or.

Another, which is difficult. Family is the thing. It's not the emotion. If the show had been about golfers, but had the same degree of emotionality and done it the same way, people wouldn't have had that pullback. It's. Family is tough. It's like people have lost older people our age. A lot of them have lost a parent or two, younger people. It's a lot to think about, all this big stuff. You know, people harbor ill towards their parents, harbor love towards their parents, vice versa. It's like a lot.

It's confrontation to be presented with it and have it mirrored back to you. Yeah, a little too close.

Yeah, because it's interesting because the emotionality of the show, which has always mystified me. Like, the conversation around the crying, like, it's just so around us. I mean, I have a four year old now. He's taking, once in a while in his little Spider man backpack. He'll take a little car toy home from school. And Kate noticed it, and she sat him down, and she said, my wife? And she said, dude, you can't. That's not good. And on Monday, we're gonna have to. You're gonna take the car back, and you're gonna tell the teacher you're sorry, and you'll tell. But that's kind of. I know you don't mean to, but that's kind of not good. Stealing. It happened to be a day this would be so. And this is us if we were still hanging tv show. And so. Wait, why are you laughing? I'm getting in trouble for.

No, no, no. Continue.

So, the other day, it was a rare morning where we both were taking him to school. Normally, it's one of us. We had to actually go volunteer for something at school. For whatever reason. We're both in the car, and as we're walking up, Ben's, like, very quiet, and he's got his little backpack on. I'm like, he had taken a while to get out of the car. Kate was getting out of the car, and she's like, he's really amped about this apology. He's nervous. Like, he. Like. And it's like, I don't know which teacher he's gonna say it to. And we don't know what's gonna happen. And we're walking into school, and there's a teacher, this very sweet young woman, Katie, who has actually, coincidentally, has a kid in the class. She goes, good morning, Ben. And he just turns to Katie. We were not ready for it. He goes, now. Now he wants the toy, right? He wants his backpack, and he wants the toy. He could give it to me now. And so she goes, oh, okay. And he decided it was gonna be Katie, the first teacher he saw, and she gives him it.

And in a very, like, loud, adult voice, he said, I stole this car from school on Friday. I want to tell you it will never happen again. And I'm very sorry, teacher Katie. I'm very sorry. I promise it will never happen again. Kate starts crying. The teacher starts crying. The teacher's crying because he was just, like, so kind of brave and just owning it, and no one had heard him use his voice. He's kind of a shy kid. And everyone. I wasn't crying, but, like, people were, like, crying and I was like, everything's fucking emotional. This is us was more emotional than that. They're crying over him returning a stolen lightning McQueen toy, you know, I don't know. That's my take on, you know, where I was laughing?

I'm laughing because I think you. And I was legitimately surprised when people keep coming up to us and saying, like, you guys make me cry all the time. Da da da da da. And I'm like, I guess that's a good thing or a bad thing. I'm sorry. Thank you. You're welcome. Because it comes from Dan, who has such, like, such a defined sense of humor, right. And, like, Dan doesn't lead with his emotionality, right. He sort of leads with his intelligence and his humor and whatnot. And so the fact that the show kind of became known for this thing that it elicits from you. I'm curious for you, because, like, I've seen Dan cry twice.

Really?

Like, I think he cries the least out of everybody.

Oh, for sure.

Out of all of us.

Like, we will all be like, everyone's. Like, when Dan had us up to the place when it was in our final season.

Oh, yeah.

And he gave us a really sweet gift. I was like, oh, cheeks is crying. Like, do you remember this?

Yes.

The sweetest thing in the world. And so I'm curious how you.

Can you stop a podcast midway through? You know what?

I changed my mind.

I don't want to do this for you.

Like, like, is there to write the show? Did it ask you to tap into a vulnerability that you don't typically share?

But I think I do. I mean, I think I. I think your assessment is correct. But, like, I think, like, I do actually sometimes get my eyes tear up when I was writing this stuff because that's probably my first time experience doing it. Like, I remember feeling it a few times.

I remember you saying that to us. You'd message us on the group text and be like, guys, this episode.

Yeah, once in a while, it would get me. And, like, so, yeah, I mean, I think. I think, you know, my dad's not a crier at all. I don't think I've ever seen him cry. But after the pilot aired, when we were in the mexican restaurant doing the live tweeting for the premiere, I remember very vividly one of my. That's all he said, right? It wasn't mexican sports bar.

It was on Melrose, right?

Yeah, it was on Melrose.

They had a taco on the menu.

No.

Sports bar, guys.

It did have a sports bar feel.

But there were a ton of tvs everywhere.

Yeah, but it was called, like, el Cholo or El something.

Yes, I remember Sterling. Sterling had his Emmy, right? And he was waving. He was waving it around.

I'm telling you, it was a mexican theme.

You gotta keep it contained.

Anyway, we'll cut this out. My dad called after the pilot ended and he was hysterical.

Whoa.

He was really crying. And he was like. And my dad. My dad's. My dad's normal routine in my career. It's a funny routine. My dad gets one paper to this day. He lives in Florida now, and he gets the New York Post. And anytime I would have a movie opening up or anything, he would call me, like, well, you got another shitty review in the Post.

Thanks, dad.

I'm gonna send you a different newspaper.

It's not like. It's not like you receive. At my car, at the premiere of cars, it was the biggest, and I mean, technically the biggest premiere of all time. It was at a racetrack. It was the most people to ever attend a movie premiere. It was my first movie. And I flew my mom and dad out. And there was divorced. It was, I think, their first time seeing each other, plus their significant others. We were sitting with Paul Newman. They both fell asleep during the movie. So they're not the demo. My point.

My point being.

My point being, they are not people who just, like, shower you with platitudes. And so my dad, though, he called, he was crying. And I remember, I was like, hey, what's going on? And he's like, we have a bunch of people over to watch the new show. And he's like that. And he just. He kept going. He was. He would say he threw tears on the phone. He would be so embarrassed about this story. You can cut this part. But he would say. He was saying, you're a good person. You're a good person, through his blubbering. And I always felt that more than emotion or things, I felt like people felt decency coming from the television show and from the cast. And I genuinely feel like, through the writing and then through the cast, it felt like good people were making something, I think. And because. And to a person, the cast is filled with good people. Very good people. And so I always felt that the show never checked quite the cool box, but it did. And that irritated people because it would win the awards. And we wore it all this year.

To be on a network tv show. And we were all sitting at the.

Golden Globes and you guys were winning the SAG multiple times. Thing as a cast, but it was an interesting thing that we were able to thread that needle. And I think it speaks to what people want. I don't know. I thought more than emotional, it was like people can recoil against decency. Most of your leading cool shows are antiheroes, right? I always thought in a weird way, and I loved succession, but I thought succession is the mirror to this is us.

Absolutely.

It is about three siblings vying for their four siblings, but vying for their father's shout out to Alan Rick, their father's attention, to be the primary person in a family. It's about parents and children. It's about generations, even though they're not going back and forth in time. I mean, there was a lot of connection, but the shows could not be, obviously more different. And that's not to say bad people made the other one, but there was something in the. In the water on this one. I don't know.

Well, again, it's confrontational. Decency is difficult.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, to just. To just write your brother off or to just not. Not make the phone call to your.

Dad, to not find your biological father, to not confront your mother about choices she made. Like, yeah, I mean, it's an endless list.

Yeah.

We'll be right back with more. That was us.

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What was the most challenging episode or time in the show's history for you?

That's a good question, man.

I thought on that. I want to hear your response.

I mean, the beginning, I mean, we.

Could think about, obviously, on a workload level.

The first season and into the second was so hard because it was just all new, but it was also so exciting, but it was also so crazy.

How often did you feel overwhelmed? I mean, I remember having conversations with you. Were you, like, in it? Did you ever feel like, I can't do this, or did you feel like, I just have to figure out how to keep.

No, it just. It took a toll. Like, I mean, it was just like a. It was just. It was so much. I had an I during that first season. I also had a second tv show that was going, and I was prepping a movie that I was going to direct during the hiatus. Like, I was editing the Memphis episode and everything else from New York where I was prep. We were already done shooting. I was prepping a movie. So it was just, like, a lot for me personally, show wise. Like, the first season was like, everyone was like, are you enjoying it? It's so successful. And I was not enjoying any of it. I was just, like, keeping my head on straight and trying to survive. And it wasn't that I wasn't enjoying it, but it was just like, I mean, like, I mean, we had so many things. Like, you guys had them throughout, but, I mean, I don't do press. I don't do, like, I don't do, like, events where. I mean, like.

And we had a lot of that.

It was, like, nonstop, and I was like, you're not present for any of it. You're nauseous the whole time. I remember standing with Mandy at the first one, which was at that barker airline hanger thing. It was like the critics Choice award. It was our first award show. And I remember Chris Casper's our publicity guy coming up to me and being like, hey, I just want to give you the layout of the stage. If you win, you'll be the. You'll be the one going up and speaking. I want to show you the path. And I was like, what's going on? If we win, he's like, dan, you might win. Do you have a. And I was like, no, I don't I don't. I've never been to. I mean, it was my first time in a tuxedo since my prom. You know what I mean? Like, I'm like, so, same tuxedo, same tuxedo.

He would come up to me and be like, sterling, if we win, you get up and you say something, you can do this stuff. I'm like, you need to say something, man.

So the first season was challenging in that regard. I think the third season was really challenging in terms of being like, that's our first season where we have to now keep this thing rolling with more storylines we're inventing now.

Jump to Vietnam.

Jump to Vietnam and marital crises with I believe you guys. And, like, you guys, we'd also get.

In the three season pickup for after three. After three. Okay, gotcha.

But three was the first time, like, what I had in my head, in my soul, was like, the first two seasons of the show and the last season of the show. Like, I could have done this as a three season show, but I always knew six that it would. It could bear to live longer. We appreciate it, would mean it would as a piece of commerce. It needed to last.

The audience appreciates it, but.

So that was the first year of going, okay, how do we invent? Where are we gonna go? We're gonna go to Mandy and Miley younger and their courtship. We're gonna go to Vietnam. We're gonna go do stuff. We're gonna start fucking up Toby and Kate and Randall and Beth and, like, do all that stuff because we're gonna give Justin a new love interest. That was the first time we were off, like, the core mission of the show and now making really cool stories, but that were gonna last for multiple seasons until we could get to my ending.

Was there one particular episode, though, that you just found so hard, for whatever reason? Maybe it was. It was so emotional. It was just like a tough nut to crack.

I remember the first season of the third. 1st episode of the third season was hard. It was when you and Milo go to a carnival and like, oh, yeah. And I was just going. And so that our first date. Our first date, it was just like a new timeline. I was like, is this big enough? We did the big Franco Harris thing with that premiere episode.

Yeah. The guy who plays Franco Harris is in our initial.

Holy shit. I knew I recognized you. Didn't realize growing me up. That's Rafael. Oh, shit. I gotta tell.

Anyway, it's like a fever dream, right?

Yeah. So that was. That was a challenging one. Just. I forget I just remember going like, is this. I mean, the first episodes. I mean, we had the pilot, the first episode, season two. The first episode of season of season one. The first episode of season two ended with, like, the reveal of you screaming in the car and showing the burned down house as you bang on the steering wheel, and the audience went bat shit. Right?

Yeah.

And I was like, oh, season three, I don't know what that's gonna be. I don't quite have that thing, because we don't. You can only. You know. And so I was like, so that was a challenge. The premiere of season five, when we decided to attack, that's the one that.

I was gonna talk about.

Yeah, that was very, very stressful and hard. Like, when we were gonna attack. I hear that more from the. From the other crowd. They're like, I get a lot of that. Like, I liked your show, but then you guys went woke. They say, which code word for whatever it is. I don't know. I'm like, really? That was such an artful, I thought, touch. But, like. Anyway, like, agreed.

I remember talking to you in the midst of the pandemic and black lives matter. The ultimate decision for you to incorporate it into the show was based on what? Like. Cause some shows were trying to, like, make alternate realities, and you decided, like, no, this is the world we live.

We were the first show back on television, basically, based off the way we were gonna go, we were still the biggest show on commercial network television. So it felt like a really big choice. We were, like, writing the episodes, literally writing the episodes when people were still, like, millions of people were dying and we were washing down vegetables outside of our house, like Lysol. That's when we had to make the decision. And it just, like, I think I've been reading a lot now with kind of the immediacy of COVID in the distance, with the immediacy of COVID now years behind us. Like, how much that period, like, really screwed up this world in this country psychologically in ways that we don't think about anymore, but that it did. So when we were making. Having those conversations and making those decisions, like, it was just so raw, I couldn't fathom how we were going to put that onto television through two months later and not address it. And I also thought. And the deciding factor for me, because there was a lot of debate in our writers room, and the deciding factor for me was that we could talk about George Floyd, but we could also own the pandemic in a way that other shows couldn't.

Because it was very specifically a family pandemic. Right? Like, the results of the pandemic and the results of the racial reckoning that the country was having at that moment in time were particularly unique for us in our show, right? We had a black kid growing up in a white family. So, like, are you kidding? But we're not going to talk about the world events right now, like, in a show that has to go six seasons. Like, I could make Beth and Randall fight again, or we could talk about something.

The reality of the world that we're living in.

Cause we were gonna get into talking about Randall reckoning with his racial background as it related to the family anyway. So, like, why not make it think? And then in terms of the masking or the pandemic, which we tried to treat artfully, but we're like, that was where I had a. You were having kids around the same time Mandy and Sully. Like, my dad didn't see our kid for a year. Cause it was just too fraught to travel and whatnot. Like, having a. I was having a baby during the midst of the pandemic. I was not at doctor appointments with my wife. I was like, sully was during that. I was in the car in the parking lot, listening to the doctor through FaceTime, often losing reception. Kate had to get induced a couple of weeks early. There was nothing wrong, but some things were starting to go astray, and everything went up fine. And I remember hearing the doctor telling her that I was making out every other word in the parking lot, and I couldn't understand what was being upset. So that was, like, our experience of having a baby. And I was like, how unique it is.

Like, if we were doing a cop show or not even a cop show, if we were doing a show about home renovations, maybe it would have made as much sense to do it, but, like, it felt like it was. So. So that was a big, challenging moment.

For us that was going on social, which you have to, like, do at your own caution, right? There were so many people who were delightfully effusive for the way in which we tackled that 501 premiere. And as many people were like, if I wanted to watch the news, I would turn to the news. You know what I'm saying? But the thing is, nobody was, like, indifferent. Like, oh, that was okay.

Yeah, it was, like, very divisive.

Well, some really. It was also a really powerful episode, a really kind of crisis point moment for the country. And so, yeah, I think that was definitely the only time we were very polarized. I think, which I thought was cool. The other hard part was just the ending, I think the last two episodes. The last two or three episodes, it wasn't hard. It was just like, I was like, you getting your own world where you're like, I'm doing the most important thing in the world. I'm ending. This is us. And you're like, so you really want to get it right. You know what I mean? And so that was, like, that last season, I was losing a lot of my senior level writers who I relied on were starting to, as you do, they're starting to get pulled in a lot of different directions because they're preparing for their life beyond the show, not that they weren't there. And I found myself just, like, with a very kind of. It felt like reverting back to the first season a little bit in that final season as a whole. Like, I'm kind of here. I want to do this right.

I still have them up. My son asked me the other day whether up. I had 18 little. You know, the little sticky notes. What are they called? Stick em, post it, post its. But you know how they're the small ones? I had 18 in three rows of six on my wall in my home office. Cause that's where I was mainly doing work from because of COVID stuff. Still at that time. And each time I would complete an edit, I would cross it off. Cause I was like, I'm gonna. I was, like, treating it like the last lap of the last mile of a marathon. And I was like, I'm going to end the show right? So that I can feel it was done right, and I feel proud of it. And I was like, but it's going to kill me. And I'm just. And I just was like. And I was just, like, so anxious about the 17th episode, and are the reveals all going to work? Is the train all going to work? And then, like, the 18th episode in the home footage. And when I was done, that was a huge moment of.

That was probably when you asked what the hardest one is, probably ending. It was the hardest. Not because I was, like, emotional and crying, but more because I was like. I really felt like. I really. I was like, God, this has been. It's really been eight years of my life, and thousands of people work on the show, and then so many people watch. I'm like, I have to try and get this right.

So you did some things. You did the scenes that we had. I don't know. I had shot a scene with William Randall and William that you put in that final episode, or was it in 17? And I was like, I forgot I had shot this. And I feel like we all had a couple of those. Cause you'd been saying we would get on the call sheet, there'd be season six, whatever. And you're like, what are we shooting? And then you shoot it. And then, like, the fact that you had. You had foresight to do that, then, that's pretty impressive.

It was the beginning of season three or four.

There was three.

Yeah.

That we shot and banked a bunch of what was eventually shown in the final.

Cause you wanted the kids. The main reason was the kids. I didn't want the kids. In retrospect, if you could have told me, do it all over again, I would have taken another beat at the very beginning of season one, when everybody was so little and shot unending's amount of footage. I would have taken three weeks before we started production. Cause then you would have had that magic trick to go to all the time or all the time in the final season. Because even we get older. You know what I mean? Like, you can feel, like, everybody just, like, maturing, and it was, like, cool to get it early, but, yeah, we.

Did that on the island, man.

Yeah.

Good footage.

Yeah.

Just real quick, do you want to talk at all about the title? Because when we. Yes, the pilot, we had, like, the untitled Dan Fogelman project, and then the working title was sort of 36. How did you wind up coming with, this is us?

Well, the original title was 36. And I just actually, some friend who's an author asked for a family member, like, a signed original pilot script. And my sister just gave me the original pilot script. I signed it, and it says 36 on it. And he was like, what the fuck is this? I can't sell this. I had done. You'll see in my office. It's a big joke. But all my early spec script movies, like crazy stupid love and a couple others, I never named them because I just, like, I hate titles, and so.

They'Re all called 36.

So I was like. At the last minute, I was like, so all over town when you're shooting, you would see UDF signs that mean untitled Dan Fogel. And I was, like, so tired of it. I was like, I'm just gonna throw a tie. Because then once you do that, you'll never land on a title. Because if you don't have a title to start, you'll never have a title. No one will ever agree on it. I put together. I'll send it to you guys. If you want, for the podcast, it was. I play it for people. I'll play for you guys after we're done here, because I save it. Also, I put together the most cocksure, like, promo that was so brazen. And I was like, you've seen it. Like, I was like, God, I was the cockiest. I should have been kicked out of a window. I put together a promo to try and sell them on this is us. And it's like, throughout the years, NBC has brought you some of the finest television in the world. And it's like, it would say, this is comedy. And it had clips from Seinfeld and all their shows, and then it was like, this is drama.

And it was like, it was like the west Wing and all their best shows. And then I was like, coming this fall, a new show to add to the pantheon of classic. And it said, like, this is love. This is laughter. This. It was all the stuff that came back.

It's great.

But I was like. I was like. I was putting the show on a stage with all these other shows, and I was like, we hadn't even aired yet. I mean, when I was sending them this, right? I mean, it was like.

But that's genius marketing.

When I made my first cut of the pie, I put that big paragraph at the beginning that explains how people are born at the same time. And that writing didn't have the words this is us in it initially. So I rewrote it slightly so that that font could kind of shrink down into the this is us. And I was like, then when it's attached to the pilot and the pilot is playing well, and they ask the audience's questions after the show, it will work.

The writing of the show, besides the title, is one thing, but, like, people come up to me constantly. You will always reference us as actors, but, like, they come to the actors like, dude, the writing on that show is exceptional. Insane, you know? So take a bow.

Thanks, man.

You're welcome.

No, Sirius, if you could take a bow.

It's part of the podcast.

That was us. Before you guys go, what can you tell us about the new show that you're working on? Plug your new show a little bit if you can.

We don't even know the name of it.

We don't know the name of it. Sterling's in it. It's good. It's very different.

It's a secret Service agent on presidential detail. We can say, yeah, yeah. It loses the president.

A retired ex. Like a retired ex president.

Yeah, retired ex president and whatnot. And so he's sort of trying to figure out how he died, why he died. What was the motivation behind it. It's a great. It's an ensemble. Wonderful actors. We can't say too much. Dan always has some sort of.

It's kind of like a political thriller, murder mystery. But there's, like, a lot of secrets behind the murder and, like, the play, like, the, like, what's gone on to get them there. So it's like.

And when it is findable, it will be found on Hulu. Hulu.

Only eight episodes. I think this is like the eight episodes, three seasons. So, like, what he would have done to this is us, is what he's doing with this.

It's so much easier.

So much easier.

My golf game's better.

A lot of the same directors. A lot of the same directors.

John and Glenn are directing our pilot.

So we have a lot of the crew.

Cool.

Amazing.

The crew is really one of the best feelings for me. Being on set is sort of being surrounded by people that you've known for eight years, you know, Tim, sound like cricky's there it is. Shawnee's there. Koi is there. Like, all of our crew from the show.

Everyone's back together.

We shoot on 31 and 32.

Amazing.

Which are the two of the sets that we shoot.

Susan came down the other day and was, like, watching Sterling doing it, and it was like, we're all on the same stage. She was like, this is a trip. Really weird. Yeah.

Well, Dan, thanks for coming to talk to us. And hopefully, if maybe down the line.

Anytime you need me, I'm here.

We would love to have you back to talk about.

I will come to Sterling's living room anytime, you guys.

I love it. It's mine. It's nobody else's.

Please subscribe. Call up your family and friends, have them check out this show, and we can go through the show again together.

Yeah.

Rate review subscribe that was us.

That was us. Thank you, Dan Foglan.

Thank you, Dan. This was so fun.

This was a cheat.

That was us. Is filmed at the Crow and produced by rabbit Grin Productions and Sarah Warehan. Music by Taylor Goldsmith and Griffin Goldsmith.