This Is Us producer breaks down the fall of Kate and Toby, and the rise of Kate and Phillip
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Warning: This article contains plot details from Tuesday's episode of This Is Us, "Katoby."
It's all over. It's begun again. And it may take a while, but you'll see: It's going to be fine.
Tuesday's episode of This Is Us toyed with the temporal and the emotional, transporting viewers on a montage machine that revealed the final year and a half of one romance and the first few years of another. The long-feared/awaited dissolution of Toby (Chris Sullivan) and Kate's (Chrissy Metz) marriage did indeed come to pass, but not without a fight (in all senses of the word): Toby opted to try to save their relationship by moving to L.A. and taking a career-stifling job that he was not happy about, and they began therapy, but that didn't seem to help either.
After a nasty fight that once again took its toll on Jack Jr., Kate decided she'd had enough over this year-and-a-half period and pulled the plug. As they were about to sign the divorce papers, Toby made an unsuccessful last gasp to reverse course. "Just because our marriage is over doesn't mean our story is over," Kate told him. "We were meant to find each other in that weight-loss group. And we were meant to be together. And now, we're meant to be apart. And I know that one day you will see it."
"Kate, I promise you, I will never see it," he said as he walked away. A few years later, on her wedding day, Toby called to say that he — who'd also find another partner one day — did finally see it.
Their fall was juxtaposed with the rise of Kate's romance with Phillip (Chris Geere), which was teased in a flash-forward at the end of season 5. Viewers were whisked through key moments of their courtship, from first-date hesitations (where he revealed his tragic history with his blind wife) to his awkward meeting with Toby to discuss the parenting of his two kids, to the "date-that-changed-everything" karaoke session in Koreatown on the day of her divorce papers signing, to his child-supported wedding proposal, to their tub-thumping engagement party, to and far beyond, when Jack Jr. (Blake Stadnik) performed at a club and was so happy to see his parents together, even if they were with different partners. Oh, and did we mention that in the future, Madison (Caitlin Thompson) is expecting a child with Elijah (Adam Korson), Sophie (Alexandra Breckenridge) is there, Kevin (Justin Hartley) dates a lot of women who aren't at all what he's really looking for, and Kate is definitely alive?
Let's kill a guy for delivering the perfect speech, hit the CBD pen, have a low bar when it comes to humor, fish Boba Fett out of the toilet, and speak with the parfait interview subject: executive producer Elizabeth Berger, who co-wrote "Katoby," the show's 100th episode.
Ron Batzdorff/NBC Dinner and a divorce? Toby (Chris Sullivan) and Kate (Chrissy Metz) move toward the inevitable
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: This episode had a classic This Is Us M.O. — wreck your eyeballs two ways, cutting with you with heartbreak and sadness while applying the salve of hope and new romance. Is that why you told the story of Kate and Toby's divorce against the rise of Kate's previously hinted-at relationship with Phillip?
ELIZABETH BERGER: You really hit on exactly why we did it this way. We really loved the idea of juxtaposing these incredibly painful, heartbreaking, heartbreaking moments of the end of Kate and Toby's relationship with these incredibly beautiful, joyful moments of Philip and Kate's relationship. In a lot of ways, it felt like the only palatable way to tell this story, because we all thought that telling the Kate and Toby's story was so heartbreaking, but we simultaneously wanted to leave people with and have people feel joy and uplift throughout the episode. And not just at the end, because we honestly didn't think that would be enough to make this episode bearable.
We also loved the way that when you look back at the episode, everything kind of swirls together — the sad chapters, the joyful chapters, they're all right next to each other and mingling together. We feel like it mirrors the way life feels when you look back on it. You don't necessarily remember it all linearly, but you remember that all of these things happened and that they made up your story.
There are so many key moments to depict in the fall of a relationship, and in the dawn of a new one. You managed to stuff a lot of them in here. Be honest: Did you wish you had another season once you started mapping this out?
I mean, it definitely was one where we were like, "How is this all gonna fit?" It is one of those episodes where even though there's so much happening and so many montage pieces, the actual scenes are less in number than some of the ones we do. And we felt really happy that we had room for our scenes to breathe in those big moments, like the last big fight you have before you intend to end a relationship really got the time to breathe and stand on its own. So even though it was a very big one, we also loved that we had the time to delve into some of these more important, memorable moments.
Speaking of that big fight, was there no coming back after Toby said, "Sorry that Jack Pearson died and you ended up having to marry me instead of him," and, "This marriage is a rigged game"? What was the line that broke you and Isaac (Aptaker, executive producer) while you were writing it?
Oof. I think people are split between whether it's "This whole marriage was a rigged game," or whether it's "I'm miserable because you are in a room." [Laughs] It's sort of a Choose Your Own Adventure of terrible lines. But we did feel like they needed to have the fight in this episode that you don't come back from. Kevin says to Kate early in this episode, "You'll know when it's time," and we've really seen both of them try and try and try, over and over again, this season, and not give up and really fight for the relationship. We wanted to play the scene where at the end of it, it really feels like it's time — both to Kate and maybe if you've been watching at home and thinking about whether this couple should stay together. We wanted to bring people to a place where perhaps they agreed and felt like it was now officially time to move on.
In your mind, what was ultimately the cause of death for Kate and Toby?
Oh, it's a really hard question. Kate and Toby met at a really vulnerable place in both of their lives. They met at this weight-loss support group when they were focused on losing weight, but so much more was going on than that. Toby was coming off a divorce. He was still battling depression. Kate still had all of these unresolved issues about her father's death. I think they were two really vulnerable people that found each other and fell in love and then changed dramatically throughout the course of our series. And in a lot of ways, they changed and grew for the better. I don't think they always grew together. And in my mind, in a lot of our writers' minds, I would say that was partially what caused their demise; you can either really transform as a couple through the years or you can grow apart. And for whatever reason, as this couple stepped into their own individually, they just weren't doing it together.
Going back to the idea of juxtaposing the sad story of divorce with the uplift with her next relationship: The good news is that they're both growing and thriving; the bad news is, not together.
A hundred percent. They had to meet and fall in love and begin those journeys of healing together in order to get to the place that they ended up, even though they didn't reach the finish line as a romantic couple. It is so beautiful that independently, both of these people stepped into their own and found such personal fulfillment, both in their careers and with their children. We definitely find uplift in that, for sure.
What was important to the writers to remember as you told this painful story of divorce? Was there a mantra that you kept in mind while unraveling this couple?
We really wanted to keep things evenly weighted between this couple, where you didn't feel like there was one bad guy or one villain in the situation. We always wanted it to feel like these were two people who loved each other deeply, who were trying very, very hard to do the right thing by each other, and ultimately at the end of the day just couldn't make it work. I mean, the way we would test how we were doing is, scripts would come in and we'd ask, "How do you feel about Toby in this episode? How do you feel about Kate?" And we always felt like we were the right zone if half our room was like, "Kate is so wrong here!" and the other half was, "I could kill Toby in this episode!" Often things aren't cut-and-dry, there isn't a bad guy; it's just for whatever reason, two people not communicating and unable to make it work.
What was the most memorable or even brutal writers' room debate over Kate and Toby?
Nothing was too brutal. It was more just really interesting conversations. When we did the story of Kate going to visit Toby in San Francisco, it was very interesting the way different people respond to the choices Toby was making and the way Kate was reacting. We have Toby showing Kate this house that he has picked out for them and envisioned for them and Kate responding not too favorably, because she feels really blindsided and people were really ratcheted up about, "Oh, come on, he's doing this amazing thing! What's wrong with her? She's being terrible!" And on the other side you had people saying, "No, this is insane! It's too much! She's just trying to get out there and dip her to toe into what it would be like to visit the city or live there!" Every part of that episode, we were really going back and forth about whether we were properly weighted in terms of what Toby was doing and the way Kate was responding to it.
This arc hit Chrissy and Chris pretty hard, and it was touching to see their attachment to this relationship. Was it bit of a hard sell at first to get them to — well, to quote the show — "see it"?
It's hard for all of us. It's hard for the writers who have known that it's part of the plan for a long time. We love this couple — Sully and Chrissy love this couple. We've spent years with them. We've watched so many different, beautiful chapters of their love story. So I think it was hard on all of us. At the same time, we all understand it and we've all come to terms with it. And we all really do understand why this couple met this fate romantically. But yeah, it's very difficult to love these characters deeply and watch them go through this.
It's hard to watch Toby plead with Kate to give it one more try right as they're about to sign the divorce papers. What part of him thought that a last-second reversal was possible, what part was straight desperation, and what part knew it was futile, but it was almost part of the letting-go process to make that last-ditch effort?
I think pure desperation took over in that moment. And it's such a moment of vulnerability and fear as he says, "Please don't do this, please don't do this." He can't imagine this next chapter of his life, and he is just purely desperate. It was such a beautiful performance by Sully and by Chrissy reacting to it that we all felt it strongly on the day and every time we watched the episode.
Because this episode showed so much of their decline over the next year and a half, does that mean we won't spend much time in the present day moving forward? And does Toby pop up here and there before the finale?
He definitely pops up, and you'll continue to see him. At the same time, yes, we feel like we really covered this chapter of time. So we will be generally living less in this chapter of time than we have previously and more in other chapters as we step into our home stretch… Part of the reason that it was important for us to plant all of our characters in this episode — and start talking about what they've been up to and what they've been doing — is to ground us in our next chapter as we move towards living in the Kate's-wedding-to-Phillip space.
We've learned more about Phillip, whose relationship past is rooted in tragedy. What else can you hint at that the show will reveal about Phillip — and Kate and Phillip — in the final six episodes?
We're going to get to see a little bit more of how they function as a couple. We are just so excited by what Chris Geere brings to the role and what the chemistry is like between the two of them. Obviously it was a big challenge for an actor to take on, to be the guy that gets to marry Kate after Kate and Toby fall apart. And we were all kind of unsure: "Will any actor be able to do this without America just saying, 'No, thank you, we're too mad about Kate and Toby?'" And we think that he did such a beautiful job and he brings just a whole new energy to things — and it's a whole new relationship.
Phillip is going to have to learn what it means to marry into the Pearson family in a whole new way once he officially does it. And it's no easy task for anybody to take on.
Kevin dates a string of women in the coming years, "the State Farm Girl," "the Verizon girl," and "the Trojan girl." What's the matter, couldn't get "the AT&T girl"? Was that a meta wink at Kevin's ex Sloane (Milana Vayntrub)?
I don't think it was mentioned as a wink, but it was definitely then mentioned in the writers' room as like, "Huh, we had the AT&T girl once."
What happened to all his growth and moment of enlightenment after Rebecca's speech? And how many times does Randall (Sterling K. Brown) have to slap the phone out of his hands?
Kevin tries really hard and he wants to take these big steps forward in life and to really come into his own and figure himself out. But it's always a process for him. And after his relationship with Madison falls apart, there's definitely a bit of a step backwards in terms of what he's looking for romantically. But we're moving into our final stretches of episodes and there's still a pretty exciting chapter left for him.
We see a married Sophie at the engagement party. Just a little drop-by, or are you actually setting up a larger story with her in the coming episodes?
There definitely is still a final chapter to be told between those two.
Viewers also see Madison and Elijah are together, and she's pregnant. Any other hints about their relationship in the future?
They are really, really happy together. And a really beautiful thing that we got to see come out of this whole chapter is that Madison and Kevin didn't work, but they have a beautiful co-parenting relationship and they've had these beautiful children and Madison then fell in love and found a really, really beautiful ending — at least as we've seen so far with Elijah. So we felt like it was really nice to give her that so that she hadn't just been along for Kevin Pearson's ride. [Laughs]
What will we learn about Toby's new romantic partner (Laura, played by Alexis Krause), who is seen hanging out with him as well as Kate and Phillip at Jack Jr.'s gig in the deep future?
It was important for us to show that he also went on to find love and have a beautiful love story. So both him and Kate, in our minds, ended up with exactly who they should end up with and it all kind of worked out for them in the end. It just took a really brutal chapter for them to get there.
Will she be in more episodes moving forward?
She will definitely be referenced in more episodes. I don't believe she is in more episodes moving forward.
In this distant future, Kate is alive and very well. This means that viewers just got their first official confirmation that Kate is alive when everyone is gathering by Rebecca's bedside in the family mecca. How did you decide to reveal the answer to the where-is-Kate? mystery in this deep-future era? And is there still another surprise surrounding Kate in that Rebecca-deathbed era, given that we still haven't seen her yet?
Revealing that Kate is alive and well in the future in this episode felt really right to us. We really wanted to juxtapose this incredibly sad chapter of Kate's life with all of the beautiful chapters that came afterwards. And so it felt really fitting to us to finally reveal here that Kate's story continued for a very long time after her marriage with Toby ended. While I can't say specifically if there are any more Kate-centric surprises to come, I will say that we still have an exciting surprise or two up our sleeves for the final stretch of episodes!
Viewers saw the engagement party this week. Now there's a wedding to attend. What can you tease about next week's episode?
We are going to find out a lot more about what everybody's been up to and what's going on in their lives. We gave little hints of it, but now you're really going to catch up with these characters in a deeper and more exciting way. Madison and Beth [Susan Kelechi Watson] get to hang out in this episode in a way that they have not previously gotten hang — and they are a lot of fun together in a way that is really surprising. I think people are really going to love them together.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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