TV Talk: ‘This is Us’ continues to live in Pittsburgh in its new season

“This is Us” creator Dan Fogelman has long talked about bringing some of the show’s cast to Pittsburgh where the show is partially set to film scenes. Although production on the series resumed with covid-19 safety protocols in place, the pandemic ruined any possibility for a trip from the show’s Los Angeles home base to Pittsburgh during the 2020-21 TV season.

“We always live in Pittsburgh and we’ve long dreamt of getting to a Steelers game on the show with the family in [scenes set in the past], but it’s probably not on the table for this season,” Fogelman said in a Zoom press conference with the show’s cast on Friday. “But maybe next year.”

The 2021-22 TV season will be the final season for the family drama that returns for its fifth and penultimate season with a two-hour premiere Tuesday at 9 p.m. on WPXI-TV.

“This is Us” follows the Pearson family, including parents Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore), in Pittsburgh in flashbacks as well as “the Big Three” Pearson siblings, twins Kate (Chrissy Metz) and Kevin (Justin Hartley) and adopted sibling Randall (Sterling K. Brown), in the present.

Fogelman has been working on the script for the season premiere since late February and opted to include real-world events – the covid-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement – because he said, “It felt almost irresponsible not to take on the moment. And I think you’ll find when you see the episodes that it very much lives in that same space of the show, where you’re talking about the human experience, and not the political experience of anything.”

For some characters, the pandemic will mean staying in their own bubble during a cross-country RV road trip. For Randall and wife Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson), the BLM movement results in discussions of systemic racism with their daughters.

“As Black as Randall and Beth are, they’re not experts on how to metabolize all that tragedy,” Watson said. “There’s a way that they deal with it with their kids that is sort of honest. And [the kids] get to see the parents grapple with it as they’re grappling with it. … They’re the type of parents who invite their kids into that [conversation]. It’s not something that they would necessarily shield them from but try to guide them through.”

“This is Us” offers a unique perspective in Randall, who is Black but was adopted and raised by a white family.

“The way in which he was raised, and the conversations that happened in his house, are not necessarily representative of the conversations that he wants to have with his children, by virtue of what didnt happen,” said Sterling K. Brown, who plays Randall. “It’s not that [Jack and Rebecca] were bad parents. He loves his parents very much. They gave him everything. There [are] certain things that just were difficult. And they say, in general, conversations regarding race happen much more frequently in households of people of color than they do in mainstream white families, because it’s just not something that’s necessarily in the forefront of the consciousness.”

The show’s fourth season ended with a major fight in the show’s “present” timeline between Randall and his brother Kevin over aging mother Rebecca’s medical treatment. Viewers should not expect a quick reconciliation.

“When we took the fight to that place, it was never intended to be they make up the next week or the next episode,” Fogelman said. “This is fight that’s been building for 40 years between these two boys and now men who grew up in the same house. It’s in the front and center of our premiere. And it will be in the front and center of our show for quite a bit.”

Star Mandy Moore, who plays Rebecca in multiple time periods, is pregnant but the show will not alter its story, though Fogelman says there may be a “brief window” where viewers see less of older Rebecca “because we’d have some complicated explaining to do.”

And while “This is Us” won’t physically make it to Pittsburgh this season, the references will continue.

“Young Kevin begins getting more serious about football,” Fogelman says. “[Jack says], ‘He’s turning into the next Terry Bradshaw,’ and the kid says, ‘With more hair.’”

TV writer Rob Owen: rowen@triblive.com or 412-380-8559. Follow RobOwenTV on Twitter and Facebook.