There you (and Randall) have it.
Theotherhalf of his history.Herstory.
She became a casualty of a racist system arrested for drug possession and sent to prison for years.
Credit: NBC(2)
And for Randall, without realizing it, that may have been the case as well.
So I think this was a jolt in a way that was necessary.
Then the big question is: What now?
Yasu Tanida/NBC
How do you move forward when so much of your life with searching?
And personally, those are my favorite kinds of stories to tell.
How did you arrive at that story for Laurel?
So none of those things were far-fetched.
You have a person who had a drug overdose.
It wasn’t necessarily even like a, “How do we figure this out?”
It was like, “This is what comes next.”
So that wasn’t particularly a stretch.
It’s definitely something that is going to have a lingering effect.
Laurel’s story teaches viewers and Randall the importance of letting go of pain and anger and embracing forgiveness.
How successful do you think she was in accomplishing that for herself?
She ultimately did not reach out to him later in life.
I don’t know if any human being is truly ever successful at letting go.
That’s something that’s wildly relatable.
And that’s what matters."
So that was something that she struggled with forever.And that worthiness translated into her feelings of being a mother.
It’s a bit too scary.
So I don’t know if it was ever successful, but I hope she finally forgave herself.
Can you live the rest of your life torturing yourself with questions that have versions of answers?"
Where did the idea for the water scene originate?
So finding a way to bridge spirituality with human desire was something that was really important.
For myself, baptism is part of that experience.
The goal is for audiences to read it a multitude of ways.
There are people who have lost parents who say they still dream about them.
As a writer, you’ve seen what Sterling can do with your words.
As a writer, you’re like a kid in a beautiful candy store.
I think he’s one of the greats.
As long as he’ll let me, I’ll write for him for the rest of my life!
You have ties to New Orleans, having worked onQueen Sugar, which films there.
But would it have been great to go to New Orleans?
My goodness, I loved it there.
But I understood the realities.
We never see Laurel cross paths with or confront her family upon returning to the New Orleans.
In your minds, did she?Not at all.
Whether it’s by cultural norms or religious norms, they very much operate in that way.
They have an incredible ability to ignore, or at least shun.
That’s something that Laurel was aware of.
And that’s something that her parents said, “Okay, we lost both our children.
Once she returned home, she was very much resigned to that.
So I don’t imagine that they ever reconnected.
Randall seems at peace with the knowledge about Laurel that he gained.
Dan definitely wanted that to be an outcome.
A lot of adoptees who we’ve spoken to are so good at compartmentalizing.
The fullness of who they are is something that they’re not entirely sure about.
So that’s a psychology that we’re always mining and being mindful of.
And that’s something that Randall is going through and learning to shed from himself.
And a slow progression of embracing who he is.
I have no idea.
I do, but I can’t say.
But if we see her, we’ll be seeing her in a very interesting context.
Will the farmhouse become an element?
It will, as far as logistically how we can access it.
And it does not take away from the family cabin.
I think it’s just an extension of that.
There’s so much packed into this episode.
So there was quite a bit left on the cutting room floor, and I loved all of them.
There was a lot more Hai-Laurel romance.
And you have to just send out apologies whenever you have to trim things down.
But I think what ends up on screen is the perfect synthesis of what we were going for.
That’s a big thing.
It’s more than just like, “My bad!
Brothers say crazy things, am I right?,” and then, like, a high-five.
[Laughs] It’s so much more than that.
Kevin feels guilty for having left Madison to film a movie in Vancouver.
I’m actually really looking forward to that.
What’s one phrase you would use to describe what lies in the next episode?An action-adventure.
To read what Sterling K. Brown revealed about “Birth Mother,“head over here.
