Milo Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore may have played one of TV’s most loved-up couples, Jack and Rebecca Pearson, in This Is Us — but that didn’t stop the actors having a “heated” moment.
Ventimiglia, 47, recalled the actors were once so in character while filming a fight scene that he swore at Moore, 40.
“So I’ll just start by saying of course, Mandy Moore is one of the kindest human beings, she is who you all see her to be. Lovely, kind, beautiful, wonderful. Mandy Moore has never been cursed at in her life,” Ventimiglia shared on the Wednesday, October 16 episode of the “This Was Us” podcast.
Chiming in, Moore laughed as she confirmed, “Yeah, no one’s said ‘f– you’ to me.”
Ventimiglia went on to explain that he and Moore were filming a scene for This Is Us that required Jack and Rebecca to engage in a heated argument.
However, they both got so caught up in the moment that they went off-script and cursed at one another.
“In the middle of a take, things were kind of going in a direction, I think I, as Jack, was feeling it. I was a little defensive,” Ventimiglia explained. “I think you might have dropped an F bomb, then at one point in this back-and-forth at the very end of this chasing around, I was just like, ‘F— you!’”
He continued, “And I kind of had started to look away but Mandy had literally [put her] her finger under my chin and pulled my face back. And what did you say though?… I know what you said, you said, ‘Look me in the f—ing face!”
For her part, Moore admitted, “It got hot, it got a little heated,” and added, “Listen, sometimes you just have to go there.”
While the scenes were ultimately left on the cutting room floor due to the show’s restrictions on swearing, Ventimiglia described the take as “incredible” and said that he still has the uncut footage somewhere.
The duo played Jack and Rebecca, the parents of three unique triplets, in the NBC series from 2016 to 2022. The tear-jerking show followed the family through the ups and downs in various decades of their lives. Sterling K. Brown, Justin Hartley and Chrissy Metz starred as the adult versions of the Pearson triplets.
Moore and Ventimiglia’s onscreen chemistry made them an instant fan-favorite and critically acclaimed TV couple. They also formed a strong real-life friendship, often praising each other.
