{"id":8897,"date":"2018-01-23T09:53:42","date_gmt":"2018-01-23T14:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/us-star-justin-hartley\/"},"modified":"2018-01-24T09:41:24","modified_gmt":"2018-01-24T14:41:24","slug":"this-is-us-star-justin-hartley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/this-is-us-star-justin-hartley\/","title":{"rendered":"This Is Us’s Justin Hartley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Justin Hartley, who plays Kevin Pearson\u2014one of the siblings This Is Us\u00a0centers on\u2014spoke to <\/em>TV Drama\u2019s Anna Carugati about the series\u2019 success.<\/em><\/p>\n

The NBC family drama This Is Us <\/em>was one of last season\u2019s biggest breakout hits. This year, the show has landed the coveted post-Super Bowl slot. The series has delivered audiences an abundance of laughs, cries and twists, and its ensemble cast has earned much praise (as well as accolades).<\/p>\n

\"***Image***\"TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Why do you think the show has touched so many people?
\nHARTLEY: <\/strong>It\u2019s become like everyone\u2019s personal anthem. The characters are so diverse on the show and they\u2019re all going through their own separate things. The writers have done a really good job of writing these characters in a way that makes them relatable to so many different people from so many different walks of life: women, men, old, young, even kids. Everybody has suffered at one point in their lives, right? People feel like the show is speaking to them.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Tell me a little bit about Kevin\u2019s journey and his relationship with his twin sister, Kate, and his adoptive brother, Randall; it’s pretty unique, isn’t it?
\nHARTLEY: <\/strong>It is unique. In the beginning, Kevin had a strained and estranged relationship with his brother and a co-dependent relationship with his sister. I don\u2019t know which was more unhealthy, to be honest with you. You see Kevin with the great job, the cars, the women and the money. He lives in L.A. and has a great home, and he\u2019s got fame. Then you see him sabotage all of that, and you think, Oh my God, he\u2019s gotten rid of the only thing he has in his life. Then you realize, when you start peeling back [his layers], that getting rid of all of that helped him get down to what was really important, which was maybe a little separation from his sister, maybe starting to appreciate her a little bit more, and she needs to live her life as well. And Kevin needs to grow up; he doesn\u2019t even know how to fold clothes! He goes out and starts to get this desire to have a relationship with his brother, and then quickly realizes this is not an, I\u2019m sorry, pat on the back, let\u2019s go have a beer. He\u2019s in it for the long haul.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Is Kevin\u2019s difficult journey as an actor all that different from what a typical actor goes through?
\nHARTLEY:<\/strong> Not this actor! You try to prepare and do your homework and pride yourself on (at least I do) doing all of the work before you film it so that you have something good. And then sometimes what happens is that it\u2019s like, now that\u2019s who you are\u2014it\u2019s like Forrest Gump syndrome. Tom Hanks amazes me. He played Forrest Gump, and I remember watching that and thinking, That\u2019s one of the best performances I\u2019ve ever seen and I don\u2019t know how I\u2019m ever going to see him as anything other than Forrest Gump. And now, I don\u2019t think of Forrest Gump at all when I think of Tom Hanks. He has this magical way of becoming different people, but one of the things that happens with actors sometimes is you get typecast.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA: <\/strong>How do you work with This Is Us<\/em> creator Dan Fogelman? Do you know your storylines ahead of time, or do you learn them with each script?
\nHARTLEY: <\/strong>He\u2019ll tell you whatever you want [to know]. There are certain actors on the show who don\u2019t want to know anything, so he\u2019s respectful of that, but if you want to know everything, he\u2019ll tell you everything he knows.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA: <\/strong>And what do you prefer?
\nHARTLEY:<\/strong> I wish I didn\u2019t want to know, but when I sit down with him, inevitably I say, \u201cTell me everything!\u201d I want to know everything that goes on. He\u2019s a great storyteller, so it\u2019s not like he\u2019s giving you spoilers that are going to ruin future episodes that you\u2019re going to read. He gives you these really concise outlines of the season, and you go, Wow!<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Tell us about working with the rest of the cast.
\nHARTLEY:<\/strong> They\u2019re great. They\u2019re some of the kindest people ever. We\u2019re all there for each other. We truly are a family. One of the interesting things that happened was the script was so special to all of us that we became parents, like co-parenting. We all had this baby we were taking care of\u2014this script we all love so much\u2014and we just hit it off right away. These guys are so much like their characters and at the same time so incredibly different from their characters. They\u2019re just great actors, and it\u2019s fun to work with people at the top of their game. They\u2019re excited to be at work, and we all love what we do.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> How did you get involved in the show, and what appealed to you about the character of Kevin?
\nHARTLEY:<\/strong> I got a phone call from a friend of mine, and he said, \u201cDo you know Dan Fogelman?\u201d and I said, \u201cYeah.\u201d He asked, \u201cWell, how long have you known him?\u201d I said, \u201cA long time. I\u2019ve known him for like ten years.\u201d And he goes, \u201cSo you guys are friends?\u201d and I said, \u201cNo, no, I know of him. We\u2019re not buddies.\u201d And he goes, \u201cAre you sure? Because I feel like he just wrote you.\u201d And I said, \u201cWhat are you talking about?\u201d He said, \u201cI\u2019ve got to send you this script.\u201d My agent had also sent me the script, which is weird because now I had two copies of the script, and I\u2019m thinking, Someone wants me to read this. So I read it and thought, Oh my gosh, it\u2019s not me, but I can relate to this guy. I got this. I understand Kevin.<\/p>\n

I went in and auditioned, and I remember reading this big monologue he had about the Challenger [space shuttle] exploding and how he\u2019s a ticking time bomb\u2014you know he is the Challenger, right? He\u2019s about ready to go nuts. And I remember thinking, How hilarious is that\u2014this guy is comparing himself to the Challenger explosion and how he remembers it as a kid. It\u2019s tragic, but I think it\u2019s really funny. He\u2019s self-aware enough to say, I can feel it happening. I just pictured it. I think it very easily could have been read the other way, where it was very serious, so I went in and had them laughing and I was lucky enough to get it. Later, I showed up on set and they just surrounded the show with this wonderful cast\u2014those guys are amazing. And that\u2019s it; the rest is history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The actor, who plays Kevin Pearson\u2014one of the siblings the NBC family drama\u00a0centers on\u2014speaks about the series\u2019 success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,70],"tags":[2342,1330],"class_list":["post-8897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-interviews","category-top-stories","tag-justin-hartley","tag-this-is-us","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nThis Is Us's Justin Hartley - TVDRAMA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/this-is-us-star-justin-hartley\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This Is Us's Justin Hartley - 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