“It’s a really huge challenge for us,” he told EW this summer.
It really is a complicated question.
We’ve been all over the map.
Credit: NBC; Ron Batzdorff/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
I think we have a plan that splits the balance."
“Here are the new rules we’ve been given,” he summed up.
“There’s a lot of things hanging in the balance.
How do I make sense of all the darkness?
I think that leads to a lot.
That’s a place where we live very comfortably.”
Exactly how will these characters live through these times?
Is it foreground, backdrop or both?
(The first trailer for the season 5 premiereshowed Kevin in a mask.)
“We have a character who’s a local city councilman in a major metropolis.
We have characters who have been bathed in privilege as movie stars on the West Coast.
Not every character, every story line is going to be all COVID all the time.
It’s going to be present in the world as it’s present in our lives right now.
Our lives haven’t stopped, but they’ve been pretty altered.
What we want to give a shot to do is find the balance.
Some people are wildly affected in different ways about what’s going on in the world right now.
“That becomes a more complicated decision in the midst of a pandemic.
There’s also the reality of our world right now.
Just because there’s a virus raging doesn’t mean there aren’t children who need homes.
Having had a child myself in the midst of this, having babies is a different experience right now.
Having a baby was going to be an intense experience and a life-defining experience.
“It’s going to be reflected very directly in our two-hour premiere,” Fogelman says.
There’s a lot going on.
We’re addressing it head-on.”
One would think that the possibility for instructive conversation lurks in many places in the Pearson universe.
“The reckoning that’s happening right now in America is happening for everyone.
It’s a moment in time for this show that is uniquely American in a lot of ways.
So we’ve been working very hard.
We’ve been having really intensive conversations in our writers' room, with our cast.”
There also were plenty of conversations about how to pull offanyof this safely in a pandemic.
For now, the Pearsons go forward into this brave (and scary) new world.
“It feels really big,” he sums up.
I’m very proud of what we’re trying to undertake.”
The season 5 premiere ofThis Is Usairs Tuesday at 9 p.m. on NBC.
Chrissy Metz alsodropped hints about the new season, asdid Chris Sullivan.
And you might want to hear whatMilo Ventimiglia had to say.Susan Kelechi Watson, too.
Oh, andSterling K. Brown.
