Goodbyes are never easy.
On a show likeThis Is Us, they can be downright brutal.
(It was a BBQ theme, after all.)
The cast of ‘This Is Us’ on EW’s digital cover shoot.Pat Martin for Entertainment Weekly
“How do you guys feel about saying goodbye to your characters?
“Mandy Mooreasked her castmates during EW’s Around the Table shoot.
Like, they will no longer exist anymore.”
You really do feel like, all the years.”
“I don’t know how to say goodbye,” sums up Moore.
“The hair department let me keep the old man wig.”
ForMilo Ventimiglia(a.k.a.
Jack), the goodbye carried an extra layer of lament.
(Except when it involved dreams or drugs.)
“But you’re always with us,” consolesChrissy Metz.
“I didn’t expect Kate and Toby to not make it,” Metz says.
“I knew somebody wasn’t going to.
I just didn’t know it was gonna be Kate and Toby.”
No, that’s my dawg.
This is my Chris.
It’s like, I miss you, you know?"
There also was some discussion of who in the cast was the best crier.
(And some discussion of what “best crier” even means.)
But as he points out, it was the opposite situation when the cameras weren’t rolling.
“Backstage is constant laughter,” Brown says.
When the show is as heavy as it is, people think we live in that the whole time.
I don’t think so.
I think that would be too difficult to just carry that kind of weight the whole time.
So we do what we need to, to make it release."
Adds Sullivan: “I’ve only had a few scenes withJustin [Hartley].
And every single one of them ends with me in tears, trying to hold in laughter.”
(Okay, so maybe even off-camera there were a lot of tears, too.)
Before the roundtable was over, the cast did offer up a few hints about the series finale.
“There’s an elegance to its simplicity,” Moore says.
Sums up Hartley: “Full circle.”
