'This Is Us' Star Sterling K. Brown Shares His Deeply Personal Connection to Randall's Anxiety
This Is Us season 4 episode 11 explores Randall's ongoing battle with his anxiety.
This Is Us star Sterling K. Brown opens up to GoodHousekeeping.com about his own internal struggles before playing Randall on the hit NBC show.
Sterling also shares where he sees Randall's mental health journey going throughout rest of the series.
The newest This Is Us episode of season 4 centers around Sterling K. Brown's character Randall as he grapples with anxiety, something the actor is all too familiar with offscreen.
While speaking with GoodHousekeeping.com about his partnership with Survivorship Today — a Bristol-Myers Squibb project that aims, in part, to raise awareness about those living with cancer and the mental toll the disease can take on them — the Emmy-winning actor revealed that he has a deep connection to mental health issues. When preparing to take on the role of Randall in 2016 and explore the character's anxiety struggles, Sterling says he did his own research on the topic and listened in on the conversations being had in the This Is Us writers' room. Beyond that though, he also drew inspiration from what he's gone through in the past before making it big as an actor.
"I remember the tremendous amount of pressure that I placed on myself in high school in terms of trying to exceed great expectations. And the pursuit of perfection, right? And how that is an incredibly motivating thing, but it can also be quite a debilitating thing if you think that perfection is, indeed, something that is attainable," Sterling explains.
He continues: "I’m not immune to having placed a great deal of pressure on myself to be something for not just me but for everybody else — the expectations of family, of community, you feel people supporting and wanting to see you win. And so, you’re doing it for you, but you’re also doing it for them and you feel as if you can let everybody down if things don’t work out the way that you want them to."
What's more, Sterling says many of his family members have also influenced his acting performance and helped him gain a better understanding of how to represent such an important, nuanced issue on cable television.
"I have quite a few members of my family, people who are close to me, who live with anxiety, a few family members who are diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a couple family members who are diagnosed with schizophrenia. I see how frequently they twist themselves into knots to try to live by societal norms of what people expect, in terms of what is ‘acceptable behavior,'" Sterling says. "Then I realize[d] that there is this point where [I think], ‘Well, maybe there’s something I need to do in terms of reaching them where they are, and that where they are is an okay place to be.’"
Recognizing all of this motivates Sterling to be as thoughtful as he can when it comes to Randall.
"There are people who have mental illness but are able to have productive lives, that are able to have families, because sometimes you need to be able to see it in order to know that it is a possibility for yourself," Sterling says about the importance of his This Is Us character. "And it doesn’t mean that you have to sequester yourself to a life that's 'less than.' Your life can be equal to or greater than anybody else."
Even though the latest season 4 episode puts a huge spotlight on Randall's mental health, Sterling believes this is something we'll likely see re-emerge for his character in seasons to come. After all, Sterling believes, "that would be the most authentic representation."
"There are smooth spots in life, and then a hiccup will come along, and it will set off a reaction internally, and then you see someone have to pick up the pieces and figure out how to move forward," Sterling concludes. "We fool ourselves into thinking life is sort of this linear path. But it’s really very circuitous, if you will ... but hopefully it will move forward."
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