Once upon a time actually, about two weeks ago This Is Usuncorked a rather unconventional season 4 premiere.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Your agent tells you there might be a role for you onThis Is Us.
Your first reaction is…?
NBC
JENNIFER MORRISON:Oh, I absolutely want to do it.
By the way, this was not something that was just like offered to me.
I had to fight for this.
Ron Batzdorff/NBC
I love the show.
Everybody auditions for the show.
And I said, “Uhhh,yeah!”
You’re playing a veteran who’s been in the thick of war.
It’s a combination of their research and my research.
They’re so incredibly thorough over there, which has been wonderful.
Even every department had a lot of research, which was super-helpful.
I’m not used to having that many resources in one place.
I re-read a couple books about war.
I also started following some veterans online on Instagram and following their everyday lives.
We’ve seen the beginnings of how Cassidy is having trouble readjusting to civilian life.
What does her path forward look like?
What adjectives would you use to describe her path forward?
I mean, it’s complicated.
I know that that’s super-vague, but it is complicated.
From the get-go, what intrigued you about Cassidy?
And then turned around with so much regret, hoping that what she promised she could follow through on.
And then finding out what she promised she couldn’t follow through on.
And then the military ended up just bombing them anyway.
The levels of humanity that were there just even in that first script and it continues.
So often when we write a strong, smart woman, she has to always be tough.
They leave very little room for somebody to be vulnerable.
And the truth is really strong, smart womenarevulnerable and delicate in other ways as well.
There’s a real wholeness to that.
Speaking of Cassidy’s time overseas, are there more war experiences for us to uncover through her eyes?
She’s clearly very good at what she does.
She is very good at what she does.
I don’t think I can talk about that.
But I can say she’s someone who really has worked her way up.
That’s something that we definitely talked about it.
She didn’t come in at some sort of advantage.
She was not in a certain position because she had gone to the right school.
She really has earned her way out because of her ability.
In this episode, Cassidy tells Kevin that her husband wants her to get help.
How fragile is their marriage at this point?
Not only is her husband concerned and afraid of the circumstances, butsheis.
What can you say to those fans speculating heavily in that direction?
[Laughs] They’re speculating about any woman who could possibly have logistically had his child.
So I feel like I’m in good company with all the people being speculated about….
There’s nothing more I can say.
So that may not even be the fifth most important thing going on here.
And I think that that is just so beautiful.
It’s really exciting.
But at the same time, I don’t blame anyone for wondering how she fits into the world.
They’ve cared about these characters for three years and they’ve gone through a lot with them.
Small characters don’t get$1,200 water heater scenes.
You don’t just throw away a moment like that.
Yeah, it was beautiful.
And there’s more to come.
Every script always pleasantly surprises me with a new layer that is revealing about Cassidy.
As we saw in that final scene with them, nowhere to go from there but up?
Clearly they share that bond of having experienced and been traumatized by war…
Yeah.
And it’s not what happens for her.
There’s something so powerful about that because what’s broken in him is broken in her.
It’s like a jump-scare!
So it was a really bold move to go the distance to really set up these new back stories…. How would you describe the dynamic between this trio?
So in a sense, they’re a triangle that makes one whole.
All three of them are a corner of the triangle that is holding each one of them up.
And any one of them missing from that triangle would be a problem at this moment in their life.
Rounding off to the nearest dozen, how manyThis Is Ussecrets are you keeping right now?
So I have luckily eliminated a certain number of secrets by doing that.
[Laughs] But gosh, I don’t know, maybe a couple dozen?
Depending on how detailed you want to get with what you consider a secret.
Fair to say that Cassidy will be sticking around for a while?
I guess the way that Dan has put it is that she’s asignificant part of this season.
So that’s the way I will reiterate it.
