It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly two years since we bid farewell to the Pearson family on This Is Us. The NBC drama really sank its teeth into its fans with the talented ensemble cast, huge plot twists and sob-inducing storylines; however, there was one other thing that made the series unique — its timeline jumping. Over the course of six seasons we met several generations of Pearsons, with Justin Hartley, Chrissy Metz, Sterling K. Brown and others spending hours in hair and makeup as their characters aged. It almost wasn’t that way, though, Mandy Moore said, and she had a really excellent choice for who could have nailed the role of Rebecca.
Mandy Moore likely spent the most time of anyone in the old-age makeup, as she played Rebecca Pearson, mother of the Big Three — Kevin, Kate and Randall — despite being younger than the three actors portraying them. Rebecca also survived into her 80s, which required a drastic transformation for the actress in her 30s. Moore talked to Jesse Tyler Ferguson on his Dinner’s on Me podcast about how surprised she was that they wanted Rebecca at all ages to be played by her. She recalled:
Yeah, I was like, uh, what? Yeah, we're going to go through all these hair and makeup tests, all these, like, prosthetic tests. And if one person doesn't buy it, you know, from the executive producers and the studio and all of that, then we're going to cast someone, an older actress to play the character.
It’s understandable why everyone might have been apprehensive about Mandy Moore portraying the character at so many different ages. Old-age makeup can look comical if not done well — she has said some of alternative looks were “terrifying” — and that would have been absolutely detrimental to This Is Us’ story.
However, with so many characters to follow and viewers not always 100% sure how far into the future they were, adding in a new actress as Rebecca might have just added to the confusion. Unless, that is, they got the person Mandy Moore envisioned in the role. She continued:
And I was like ‘Great.’ So I'm sitting there, secretly feeling like maybe, just maybe, Sally Field is the better, you know what I mean? Like in my mind, I'm thinking someone has got to probably step up to the plate, but we went through four different rounds of hair and makeup. And eventually they were like, we nailed it.
First things first, they absolutely did nail it. Rebecca looked great at every age — to the point that co-star Griffin Dunne would forget she wasn’t really 70 — and Mandy Moore’s ability to capture the character in all of the different stages of her life was pure magic. However, if they would have ended up casting an older Rebecca, could there be a better choice than Sally Field?
Not only is there a pretty strong physical resemblance between the two, but I bet Sally Field would have been able to handle Rebecca’s heartbreaking story with such expertise, as the character succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease. I’m still happy that we got to see Mandy Moore handle it by herself, though. If you want to relive the Pearson saga, all six seasons are available to stream with a Netflix subscription or Hulu subscription.
