Mandy Moore reflects on Jack Pearson's death in This Is Us; “It was a relief”
Few TV moments have left audiences as emotional as Jack Pearson’s death in This Is Us , but for star Mandy Moore , filming the heartbreaking scene brought an unexpected sense of relief.
On the March 18 episode of the That Was Us podcast, Moore, along with Sterling K. Brown, Chris Sullivan, and series creator Dan Fogelman , revisited the infamous Season 2, Episode 14—titled Super Bowl Sunday—in which viewers finally learned how Milo Ventimiglia’s Jack Pearson met his tragic end.
Moore, who played Rebecca Pearson , Jack’s wife and the matriarch of the Pearson family, admitted that once the episode aired, there was a sense of relief.
“We were just holding on to the secret,” Moore, 40, shared. As an actor, she also felt emotional closure. “Now this woman can just put the pieces of her life back together and start putting one foot in front of the other and moving on.”
She explained that the anticipation around how Jack would die brought a lot of pressure to the production team. “There was so much anxiety of ‘How do we do this? How do we do this well?’ There were so many eyeballs on how is this going to go, that once that was out of the picture, it was such relief.”
For creator Dan Fogelman, revealing Jack’s fate was both exciting and terrifying. “Milo had become this character that people were just obsessed with,” he said. Once the secret was out, the show had to shift its storytelling focus, which he described as “nerve-racking.”
Fogelman acknowledged that many shows might have tried to stretch out the mystery longer, but he was firm in his decision to reveal Jack’s death when he did—and to air the episode on Super Bowl Sunday for maximum emotional impact.
The writers had planned Jack’s tragic death from the beginning—caused by a heart attack after rescuing his family from a house fire. However, Fogelman admitted that he never expected the mystery around Jack’s fate to become such a major component of the series.
“It never occurred to me that it would become bigger than a small component of the show,” he said. Though Jack’s death remains one of the most devastating moments in This Is Us history, Moore, Fogelman, and the cast agree that moving beyond the mystery allowed the heart of the series—Rebecca and the Pearson family’s journey—to truly shine.
On the March 18 episode of the That Was Us podcast, Moore, along with Sterling K. Brown, Chris Sullivan, and series creator Dan Fogelman , revisited the infamous Season 2, Episode 14—titled Super Bowl Sunday—in which viewers finally learned how Milo Ventimiglia’s Jack Pearson met his tragic end.
Moore, who played Rebecca Pearson , Jack’s wife and the matriarch of the Pearson family, admitted that once the episode aired, there was a sense of relief.
“We were just holding on to the secret,” Moore, 40, shared. As an actor, she also felt emotional closure. “Now this woman can just put the pieces of her life back together and start putting one foot in front of the other and moving on.”
She explained that the anticipation around how Jack would die brought a lot of pressure to the production team. “There was so much anxiety of ‘How do we do this? How do we do this well?’ There were so many eyeballs on how is this going to go, that once that was out of the picture, it was such relief.”
For creator Dan Fogelman, revealing Jack’s fate was both exciting and terrifying. “Milo had become this character that people were just obsessed with,” he said. Once the secret was out, the show had to shift its storytelling focus, which he described as “nerve-racking.”
Fogelman acknowledged that many shows might have tried to stretch out the mystery longer, but he was firm in his decision to reveal Jack’s death when he did—and to air the episode on Super Bowl Sunday for maximum emotional impact.
The writers had planned Jack’s tragic death from the beginning—caused by a heart attack after rescuing his family from a house fire. However, Fogelman admitted that he never expected the mystery around Jack’s fate to become such a major component of the series.
“It never occurred to me that it would become bigger than a small component of the show,” he said. Though Jack’s death remains one of the most devastating moments in This Is Us history, Moore, Fogelman, and the cast agree that moving beyond the mystery allowed the heart of the series—Rebecca and the Pearson family’s journey—to truly shine.
Read more
