SPOILER ALERT: This story contains key plot points from Tuesdays series premiere ofThis Is Us.
How about some lemonade?
How did you go about designing it?
Credit: Paul Drinkwater/NBC
Was it was always going to be at the end of the first episode?
DAN FOGELMAN:It was always designed to be exactly where it is.
It was written as such.
Looking back on the pilot, obviously the locations are very well-disguised.
I found very few people who hadnt.
And it comes to everybody at different places in the last minute and a half.
And you cut to [Jack] right then.
A few people are right on it right then.Veryfew.
And then theres a little more when he starts looking at two babies and people start going, Hmmm….
Some people start attaching right then.
Theyre still not even necessarily going, Oh, this is in the past.
But their synapses are firing.
And some people go, Oh!
And then the song starts playing and we start popping around.
But if you watch it in a room of 50 people, you hear murmuring.
You get people who are talking to the person next to them.
People who have gotten it early are crying a lot the entire time.
It ends and my stepmother and my sister are going, Oh, my God.
Dan, I loved it.
It completely caught me off-guard!
And its been off for 20 seconds and my dad goes, Theyre all related!
Id never seen that reaction.
It was like his brain was still kind of catching up to all this.
It comes to everybody a little bit different.
We tested the pilot, which Im not a believer in.
Ive had positive experiences and bad.
The [participants] turn the dials up [to indicate a positive reaction].
The beginning of the show is at the left and the ends at the right.
So its not really fair.
You get your first hint at the beginning of the episode with the 75-79 photos.
Its laid out right in front of you.
What are some of the smaller ones that people might have missed?
A question people have is, It was their birthday!
If it was the three of them, why did they never call Randall?
And my thing would be, They might have, it just didnt happen on camera.
But then if you look at Randalls computer in the opening montage, theres an email from Kevin.
If you freeze frame on the computer screen.
It says, Hey, Bro, happy birthday.
Its when hes tracking down his father.
Hospital rooms where you have a baby havent changedthatdramatically in the past 30 years.
And Gerald brought that so naturally.
Hala Bahmet, our costume designer, did a brilliant job: Milo and the jean jackets.
John said, Hipsters saved us.
The equipment, and also the different roles.
But the jeans and jean jacket is the star of the period that permeated the entire time.
You even think that the Terrible Towel is a vintage thing he bought on eBay or a throwback item….
So, you said that almost 100 percent of people were surprised.
Were there versions in which you had the reveal a little more obvious but then pulled back?
Were there versions in which it was even more difficult to figure out?
The first time we played it for people, people freaked out.
It was a testament.
The script was kind of like, Heres the basic road map.
Youre going to be just in a room.
So that it worked the first time we did it.
I was confident we got it right the first time.
And that didnt happen so we never changed it.
And then the neurotic part of you hits a point where youre scared to touchanythingbecause its working so good.
Something might be driving you crazy and youre like, You know what?
Im playing with fire.
Its working almost 100 percent of the time.
I dont want to tweak it and suddenly somebody notices something.
Just raise your hand at that moment.
Five minutes ago you watched this, and now Im going to play it again.
I want you to just raise your hand at the moment you got it.
Is it hard to trump biology?
And then also with Randall and Kevin, theres two different kinds of brothers.
So theres different dynamics.
The way this show will function generally speaking now that [the secret] is out is the same.
Theres basically four storylines that are always intercut and interconnected.
So its the same structure, four storylines.
And it informs all the other stories.
Will viewers find different kinds of surprises waiting for them at the end of episode 2 and beyond?
I think if you were going in blindly after episode 1, youre like, Whew, wow.
I wonder what happens next.
I think you get a bunch of surprises, but two big surprises.
The start of episode 2 is a surprise, and the end of it isreallya surprise…. And thats kind of how were going to open up the family…
Some episodes are going to end with these big surprises.
Some are going to end with a huge sense of completion and emotional fulfillment.
Randall is being raised by a white family in 1979, in Pittsburgh.
How much will race factor into the story?
Its a big storyline.
Its one thing to have an interracially adopted child here in Studio City, California, 2016.
Its another thing back in 1979, Pittsburgh.
Theres multiple things going on there.
Theres a white family in a predominantly white neighborhood adopting a black child.
There are three children in one home which is a stress in and of itself.
One of those children is replacing essentially a child who died, and with grief and loss.
So theres a lot of complicated elements in that storyline.
And then theres just the typical elements that happen in life.
A friend of mine adopted two little girls from Ethiopia, a guy out here in Los Angeles.
And there was a moment where his wife was at the mall with one of the girls.
and a black woman came up to her and handed her a note and walked away.
And the note said, Fix your daughters hair.
And rather than it being a really upsetting thing, it was eye-opening.
And I told that story in the [writers room].
its ahugepart of his identity.
Weve brought in people that are experts on interracial adoption and adoption to speak to those kinds of things.
Its something were really trying to do the right way.
Should we be studying the small things on this show?
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