Sterling K. Brown says 'This Is Us' won't last beyond seven seasons
At a for-your-consideration Emmy event in Los Angeles in May, This Is Us creator and executive producer Dan Fogelman reported that he and his creative team know how their award-winning and highly watched show will end, noting, “I don’t think this show despite any success it may or may not have, will overstay its welcome.”
What Fogelman didn’t do, however, is offer the number of seasons he thinks the show has left. But, in an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Golden Globe- and Emmy-winning This Is Us star Sterling K. Brown (Randall Pearson) may have revealed when NBC’s hit series will bid farewell.
Sitting alongside his Hotel Artemis co-star (and This Is Us guest player) Brian Tyree Henry, Brown said that Fogelman is actively planning to give his audience a satisfactory ending.
“I said this to [Dan Fogelman] toward the beginning of shooting,” Brown told us. “I said, ‘We got a good show. We got a great pilot, we got a great first season, but we want to have a complete experience for people.’ And our show is not a procedural, which means it can’t go on indefinitely. It’s not set in a hospital or police department or fire department. It’s about this family.”
“We would talk about Lost, and he talks about Lost being one of the chief influences on our show with regards to the flashbacks and flash-forwards. I said, ‘Lost is my joint.’ But even I’ll admit, like at a point in time, I was like, ‘Are we going somewhere? What’s the culmination?’ And so, we have an endpoint. We know how our show is going to end. Not exactly sure when it will be, but I don’t think it’ll be beyond seven years.”
With Season 2 having wrapped this past March,This Is Us would theoretically end in 2023. Of course, there are several mitigating factors that could extend or quicken that timeline. And Brown himself can’t speak with certainty on that issue. What he could speak with certainty about, though, is the series finale. At that same Emmy event, Fogelman shared that parts of the final episode have already been filmed.
“What can I tell you?” Brown wondered out loud when we asked for more information.
“Nothing!” interjected Henry. “You can’t tell us anything, because if you tell us anything about the show — you can’t tell us anything!”
“All I can say to the fans is rest assured in knowing we have a very strong beginning, middle, and end so that there’s a wonderful sense of closure when the story has finally been told,” Brown concluded.
“I hope that that feeds you guys!” Henry joked. “Just let the man live, man! He doesn’t know! He doesn’t know what’s happening with Randall. I’m sorry that that keeps happening to you.”
“But I do know,” Brown said with a smile before he and Henry burst into laughter.
Watch This Is Us stars Milo Ventimiglia and Hannah Zeile remember Jack’s emotional confession to Kate:
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