Get excited because This is Us Co-Showrunners Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger join us to share their experience leading the beloved series for all six seasons. They take us behind the scenes of their creative process, from how episodes were assigned to writers to their synergy with creator Dan Fogelman. We also dive into the art of bringing humanity to every episode, the challenge of handling actor improvisations, and the debate over incorporating COVID into the show. Plus, they reveal which storyline was the toughest to write and why small, deeply personal stories can impact audiences the most. That Was Us is produced by Rabbit Grin Productions. Music by Taylor Goldsmith and Griffin Goldsmith. Follow That Was Us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Threads, and X! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who are the showrunners of This Is Us?
I and Ian, hi!
Hi, guys.
What up, gang? How are you? We're great. We're happy to be here.
We're very happy to be here. It just feels so cozy. It feels so nice.
We're so happy to have you. I just found out, as we were finishing the show in 2022, were you pregnant in 2022? Were you just had the baby in 2021?
I had my son halfway through season three.
Through season three?
Yeah.
Okay. So he's how old, Ian?
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Chapter 2: How did Elizabeth and Isaac's personal experiences influence the show?
It got so- If I can evoke an image, the way in the 80s and 90s, you might've walked into a child's bedroom and there was wallpaper on the walls. And remember how wallpaper used to have borders at the top?
Yeah.
And there would be like dancing bears all the way around the top of the child's room or something. You walk into the writer's room. Yes. And around the top of the room, it looked like they were chasing a murder suspect.
Yep. It was the timeline. The timeline of the show.
There was yarn and arrows and post-it notes.
I don't know if you guys know this story. So obviously the first season and a half, we're trying to keep a secret of Jack's death and how he died. And so we had all over the walls the whole plan that detailed the whole thing. And we found out that on the weekends, the Paramount studio tour, they would bring tourists in and they would be like, and this is us writer's room.
You can peek in the blinds. And... who knows how many people every weekend. But we had been so proud of ourselves.
We had no idea that this was happening.
And someone told us. So then we came up with the code names for everything. And we called Jack's Death Lemonade. And it was like this whole thing of like protecting from the tourists who would. Because people were like taking pictures. They would come just peer into our offices. And the whole thing was just written out in bold dry erase marker.
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Chapter 3: What does a showrunner do in a TV series?
To that end, so the propulsion part, which we were talking about this before, like everybody's sort of like, what happened to Jack? How'd it happen? And we're like, guys, there's all this kind of story going on. And they're like, yeah, but what happened to Jack? Then we solve that. Then we introduce Nicky. I kind of feel like that's the sort of next thing. You're like, he got a brother?
Who's this brother? Where's he been? How did it end? We didn't really, did we have that for the last two seasons? Or like once Nicky is introduced, like what would you say was that sort of propulsive part that was above the just drama of the family?
I think it became those flash forwards to that future house and like older Rebecca and who's with who then? How does everyone wind up in their ways?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so it kind of flipped from the propulsion was in the past and filling in those blanks, and then it became the future. It's very lost. Yeah, very lost. It's very lost.
I was very glad that you had Toby arrive early.
Everyone's like, where am I? Where am I? Oh, that's true. Because people would be showing up to the house.
And they're like, where's Kate? Why is Kate not with Toby? They were wondering if Beth and Randall were together. Yeah, everything. Right? Then you were there without Kate.
And they would pick it apart. They'd be like, Sterling's hand was behind his back. Was he not wearing the ring? Did he lose his hand in an accident?
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Chapter 5: What were the challenges of writing during the pandemic?
And writing teams. I know we had a couple of... David and Casey. David and Casey on the show. But again, another kind of... More of an aberration than the norm in our industry. How do you guys... how do you make that marriage work? Like, it seems such a specific dynamic. Or maybe you don't, and you can tell us all about it.
No, I mean, it's, yeah, we just, it's been so easy. Like, we've been so lucky. Again, it's like the same thing as us and Dan. We just have a real shared sensibility. We find the same things funny. We have the sort of same, like, invisible line for when things go from too sentimental to, you know, trickly to all that. From Jump Street, like, from college? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I think you have to be very lucky. It's not, I mean, it's a relationship that I would say, I mean, we say all the time, we spend probably more time together than we do with our families, our spouses, our children. We're striving for more balance, but it's still the case. I mean, you have to really like being around each other and you have to really respect each other.
And then I think you also have to grow together. I mean, we're very different. We met when we were 20 and 18. I'm not going to tell you who's older.
You did with your hands.
But if you're watching on YouTube, you just saw the gesture. If you are watching this, you will see.
Don't forget to like and subscribe.
If you're for the listeners, it's her.
But yeah, you have to adjust. You have to realize that your schedules aren't going to be the same as when you were 25 years old and you could work and pull all-nighters. You have to adjust for children and relationships. And we've been really lucky that we've been able to do that together.
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