Jack Pearson wasn't always going to be the slick, long-haired character so many people have come to love. According to Milo Ventimiglia, the This Is Us producers were confused when he walked in to audition for the role.
"They wanted somebody completely different," Ventimiglia said of the role during an interview with Freida Pinto for Variety's "Actors on Actors" series. "I walked in with my beard and my long hair and set my motorcycle helmet down and they went, 'Who is this guy?'"
But it sounds like the execs were willing to rethink the role after seeing how skilled Ventimiglia was at portraying Jack's complexities.
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"I think they just saw something different than someone who had practiced the words, and they picked me," the actor said during the Variety interview. "I don't think it was so much me choosing it as it choosing me."
Ventimiglia also said that the role of Jack is "art imitating life" for him. "I was just trying to be just a man existing as a man, and here's this man who's just trying to provide for his wife and his family and all of that," he told Pinto during the interview. "It was so simple and beautiful that I thought, 'I'd just love to do it. I'd love to be a part of it.'"
Variety notes that the This Is Us role came after two other TV roles "didn't work out" for Ventimiglia. But it sounds like he always knew something better would come around. "You're in the right place at the right time as you're supposed to be," he said during the interview. Check out his conversation with Pinto below.
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