A rattlesnake tried to distract This Is Us actor Mandy Moore on Tuesday from talking to Vulture about her first Emmy nomination. It did not succeed.
Moore, who was off from work on the fourth season of the NBC drama — which was also nominated for the third consecutive year — was in the middle of talking about how emotional shooting the last day of the third season was when she calmly announced, “I’m sorry, I’m running in the house because my husband’s like, ‘There’s a snake outside.’” Then, with all the Rebecca Pearson poise she could muster, she added, “Oh, cool, there’s a rattlesnake outside.”
Once the imminent threat was gone, Moore discussed what it was like to play the Pearson family matriarch on her deathbed. “When I showed up on set, most of the crew averted eye contact with me. It was very emotionally charged — people couldn’t even look me in the eye,” she said. Moore’s hair and makeup process for that scene took six hours. “There was just a bittersweet element to the idea that we were potentially nearing the end of this woman’s life and not knowing what state she was in. She seems to be very frail and in a fragile state of mind, and there’s a lot of questions around that, and that was very sad for me. Oh my goodness, hasn’t this woman been through enough in her life?”
In previous seasons, Moore has played Rebecca from her 20s through her 60s. But the third season revealed that Rebecca lives to be elderly and move in with her son Kevin (Justin Hartley). Moore’s nomination came as a surprise to the actress, who went to SoulCycle instead of watching the announcement. After class, the 65 text messages on her phone worried her; she thought maybe the series had not been nominated this year and people were expressing their sorrow. Her husband’s text, “You did it!!!!!” confused her. “I did what? I couldn’t comprehend,” she said laughing. The show nabbed a total nine nominations.
Though she couldn’t say much about the show’s new season, Moore thinks the fourth will be its best yet. When it opens, Jack and Rebecca are back from their trip to California in the “lovey-dovey early courtship days, and Milo and I are so happy about that,” she added. “I want to live in this world for a little bit. No more tears for a while.”
But the first episode, which includes a little singing from Moore, ends with a twist reminiscent of the pilot that blew her mind. “I know pretty much everything, I thought, that’s happening on the show. And that even caught me by surprise. Oh my God, game changer. To be 55 episodes in, and to still be keeping us on our toes as actors, that’s a real feat.”
