And I feel like because we don't see it in mainstream media, we feel like it doesn't exist. This Is The Perfect Cast. This is an oral history of the Black Pearsons, the show's best part. This show has a lot of love in it.
I think that's when I started getting teary eyed. So the entire first season, I kind of avoided meeting [Sterling] because I didn't want to overly do it and have it not come off real and authentic, because even though they are both Randall, younger him wouldn't act the same as adult him. It should be disturbing because it kicks up things in us that we don't want to deal with. But over time, the relationship she builds with Randall is my favourite of the whole series, and the one that makes my eyes leak the most — and that's saying something. Baker: I was so nervous [for Tess' coming out scene]. I don't [remember it] but it was catchy. So we just played that and we just kept playing with it. They found a piece of each other in the other. The series was a balm during the Bad Times, and its brightest light was its Blackest characters (thanks in large part to two Black women, writer Eboni Freeman and executive producer and director Kay Oyegun). I was extremely comfortable at that time and really proud of the work that I was doing. I got to film a scene and have a nice monologue with him on the stairs.
And it's a beautiful thing to see and be a part of. Sometimes you can just trust an actor and you know that you're in good hands. Baker: Those are my girls for life. And the way they are — supportive, stern, respectful, funny, communicative, vulnerable, honest, understanding — is the antithesis of the typical picture of Black parenting we were largely sold on TV and film before them (with a few exceptions). We meet the same people five seconds apart and they know that he's on This Is Us, but they don't know I'm on This Is Us. Those are the moments where we really just start talking about anything in between takes. Kelechi Watson: For [Ron] to now be experiencing the type of success he is and getting the type of love he is now after all his years in this is just so well deserved and so amazing to watch. You know how you get this chill when greatness walks through? Ross: Beth and Randall stuck with each other throughout everything. And just to have that, to have pretty much a blueprint in your family of what a man should be and what a relationship shouldn't be. A lot of people felt happy that William gave them an opportunity to go back and experience it. So I was just like, "dang, it's a long drive. "
I was like, "Really? " But it's that perfectionism that at times is his downfall — from panic attacks to a bit of a saviour complex to constantly pushing to perfect his identity, Randall is one of the most complicated, yet steady, Black fathers we've ever seen on TV. And while most shows fumbled clumsily through conversations about race or queerness, or both, this show managed to pull off the seemingly impossible: Their stories were nuanced and real; progressive without being performative. Success only makes it more interesting to note the commitment director Olds and his producers maintained to casting local talent: not only filling the background with extras from the Bay Area, as with, say, Gus van Sant's Milk, but pushing the limit of how many featured and speaking roles could be populated with North Bay actors. Here, the cast talk about Sterling K. Brown behind his back (only good things, promise), and Niles Fitch explains what it's like to tackle a role also played by one of the greatest actors of our generation. I asked the cast a simple final question: what do you hope the legacy of The Black Pearsons will be?
She's a Black girl in foster care after all. So she was up for the challenge and then eventually her and Deja bonded. I didn't know how big This Is Us would be at the time, but all I knew was I had to drive all the way from Thousand Oaks to LA and that's an hour drive. And I was just like, "I love you guys and I don't know what I'm doing. " She's f*cking funny. And to be able to see a family like this, I know it means a lot to people.
We're making plans to go to Disneyland next week. That's really special too. In those early seasons, so much of the way This Is Us discusses race is in relation to Randall being a Black kid in a white family, a Black teen at a white school, a Black man in a white world. I think Eris and Lyric and Mr. Sterling and Ms. Susan definitely made me very emotional because I didn't really take it in that it was the last day, but as soon as they came and they said it was wrapped, I started tearing up. And so what would it mean if they weren't a couple anymore? I'm very invested in them. And I think it's very, very good for everybody of all ages to see that nobody is perfect. Sure, it was the big, sweeping, gut-wrenching moments like William's final words to his son on his deathbed that got me, but it was also the quiet parts — like William meeting his grandkids for the first time or that time he and Beth got high — that profoundly shifted something inside me; that made me want to cling to the family I had, not just the one I was overly invested in on TV.
I just didn't want it to be anything more than that. And don't think about yesterday or don't think about tomorrow or don't think 20 minutes ahead, but just stay in the moment, because when you think about something else you're going to miss what's happening right in front of you. We don't know what he walked away to do, but he did walk away again. It was me, Sterling, Susan, and Faithe and we all had lines and we went in with every single girl. I was even talking to God about it like, "why isn't anything happening right now?. " Maxson, who also served as associate producer and appears in the film, lives in Petaluma with two young daughters and her husband, fellow actor Gabe Maxson, who also appears in Burn Country; his semicomic turn as an inquisitive, philosophical, and deeply inebriated thespian leavens the film at a crucial moment. How is this going to go down? " I couldn't stop crying. I think that's a great representation of a Black household; the head has to be on point. I don't think that'll ever go away because he's just that great. "That could possibly be life-changing for other people, as it was life-changing for me.
I definitely forgot a few things, but he definitely taught us. But they're very interested in you for it. " But what This Is Us does so well is take these seemingly one-dimensional characters and turn them into vivid, beloved family members (case in point: Miguel). Susan Kelechi Watson, 40, Ron Cephas Jones, 65, Lyric Ross, 18, Eris Baker, 16, Faithe Herman, 14, and Niles Fitch, 20 (who plays teen Randall) remember their auditions and how they landed the roles of a lifetime. Because I was crying. Baker: Susan's hilarious. It was amazing how [the writers] were able to capture that. We just start joking around and people calling other people out. It took me aback — I didn't realise how it put my name and my image on the map as an actor in Los Angeles and Hollywood.
While Burn Country as a whole is on a high, and primed to "break" Rains and director Olds, Maxson tells me there have been interior victories as well.