Photo: nbc (3)
Families are spending more time than ever under the same roof due to the COVID pandemic — including the Pearsons.
Below, the episode’s writers, Casey Johnson and David Windsor, as well as director Ken Olin, tell PEOPLE about the “very, very confident transition” to the end of season 5 and how the COVID pandemic will affect the fictional family as the real world gets vaccinated.
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DW: Casey, I don’t know if you remember that Palmolive joke came because I had just came from washing my face with palm olive and I’m about it. [laughs]
Also curious to know if COVID has largely changed or delayed the order of the stories or production of season 5, or even season 6?
KEN OLIN: I don’t know how much it actually delayed the story, the writers all seem determined to tell these stories even though it’s very challenging because there are so many restrictions on dealing with babies. And then dealing with Mandy’s pregnancy, how we were going to accommodate her and make sure that she was safe. We actually started shooting this episode, I think, in December so that we could accommodate Mandy’s pregnancy before she got too big. Then we finished a week, 10 days ago. … To Dan [Fogelman]’s credit, he’s just determined to do it and we continue to figure out ways to do it. Filming the little babies has to be separated from the main unit shooting, so we figured that out. It’s more clinical than it appears. Our show is a warm, affectionate place to work and we had to restrict a lot of that. Everybody is really cautious, we’ve been incredibly fortunate. … As far as the future goes, we’re all looking forward to some of these things easing up as more and more people become vaccinated. It looks like we’re getting a handle on it. I don’t think we’re anticipating having to restrict ourselves too much for next year.
DW: A lot of conversations we’ve had in the [writers'] room are, first of all, what is the responsible way to portray what’s going on in terms of masks, vaccines and social distancing. We really wanted to get that right. As things have gradually loosened up so has our outlook of what we want to do and how we want to incorporate all of it into the show. You sort of hit a point where it becomes a little fatigued. We’re already living in this space, if we can get out of it as the world opens up, we want to. But at the same time, we’re not out of this yet. It’s one of those things that we’re constantly trying to navigate and get right and be responsible with.
CJ: And you’ll see with Uncle Nicky appearing at the end of the episode, you’ll find out that he’s gotten both doses of the vaccine so that he is safe to travel. We really are trying to mirror the experience that everyone is going through.
Speaking of Uncle Nicky, is his visit short-term or will he be there indefinitely? And did his trailer make it to the west coast?
DW: Without giving anything away, when we see him at the end of the episode we will continue to find out more about what his journey was getting to see the babies, Kevin and Madison, and the rest of the family. But I don’t think we should give that away just yet.
KO: With our show, there’s a rhythm. We ebb and flow with these emotional lives and we’ve gone through a period on the show where we’ve had a number of episodes that we really reinforced the connection and bond these people feel. We celebrated this unconditional love they shared. But what I love about this episode is, okay, now we’re reintroducing while Kevin and Randall aregoing to begin to find a way to heal, we’re also going to introduce the other issues that are part of any family.
Kevin name-dropped many stars (Glenn Close,Jessica AlbaandLeonardo DiCaprio) and appears to be adjusting to fatherhood comfortably, in large part thanks to his “stupid money.” Though he’s not intentionally rubbing it in, it’s clear Kevin is privileged.
As for the idea of bringing in Carol and Nicky, was that always planned or did the script change due to the pandemic? The concept of quarantine pods was very relatable.
DW: Listen, any time we can have Phylicia Rashad or Griffin Dunne in the show, we certainly love it. They’re incredible. We’ve been talking about bringing Carol back for a while and couldn’t quite figure out which episode and how to make this storyline work. It, kind of, organically happened. We started writing this back in the early fall so we weren’t sure where we were going to be in the world, and we just thought, ‘Let’s try it and let’s do anything we can to tell the story that we want to.’ It just worked out really, really well.
CJ: The timing of it worked out really well in that people are able to see their grandparents and older relatives now. It’s safe for them to come and see their family. And that we were always talking about, like, what it’s going to be like in the future or three months. It’s a little bit of a guessing game from when you’re breaking the stories. For this one, it just happened that it turned out to be really well-timed in that it’s what is happening across the country too.
Tess announces she’s dating her friend Alex. What can audiences look forward to as Tess comes into her own and further shapes her identity?
CJ: That’s a really exciting storyline for us. We are going to tell more of that story in the remaining episodes. We also loved that what we started in this episode is how that is becoming, not a source of conflict, but raising up some new issues between Tess and Beth. With Beth trying to find the right way to be there for her daughter. And then, generationally how Carol, who is an educator and has been around a lot of kids [as a high school principal], might even have more information than Beth does. We’re really excited to get into that and tell that story for Tess.
This Is Usairs Tuesdays (9 p.m. ET) on NBC.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
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source: people.com
