This week, dynamic directing duo and Executive Producers on This Is Us, John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, join the podcast! It feels like a family reunion with Mandy, Chris, Sterling, John, and Glenn as they reminisce about memories on set and what it was like working together. John and Glenn talk about what life was like before This Is Us and how they got started in their careers, world building on the show and how their directing style informed the show’s “peak behind the curtain” feel viewers came to love, and they spilled behind the scenes secrets about iconic episodes, like when Jack went back into the burning house, plus so much more! Support our sponsors: - Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host - Go to dabbleanddollop.com and use the code THATWASUS20 for 20% off your first purchase. - Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan by texting TWU to 64000. Message and data rates may apply. - For a limited time, go to SpotandTango.com/twu and use code twu to get 50% off your first order. 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 John Requa and Glenn Ficarra?
Oh my God, welcome back to the podcast. On this, a very special day. The two gentlemen who we are welcoming into the studio today are two of my favorite members of the This Is Us family. We have Glenn Ficarra and John Requa.
Hello, welcome gentlemen.
Chapter 2: How did John and Glenn start their careers?
Thank you so much for joining us. Pleasure to be here. These two gentlemen are a creative duo. Yes, they are. Directing, writing, producing team, who I think, I Love You Philip Morris was probably the first like- First film? Your coming out party, as it were. Our first official directing.
Directing in more ways than one. No, it was our first directing. But we've been working together as writers and making short films since college.
Wow.
That's where you guys met?
Yeah, in the 80s. The 80s.
For those listening, the 1900s were a complicated time.
I hitched my horse. There was disease. There was disease. There was. But if anybody ever asks me about you two, because I do talk about you a lot, I have a great amount of respect and admiration for both of you. I said, all you need to know about these two men is that they directed the pilot of This Is Us and Bad Santa. We wrote Bad Santa. And wrote Bad Santa.
Those two projects, if you mash them together, I think are a perfect encapsulation of you two. And thank you so much for joining us today.
Our first produced screenplay was a talking animal movie.
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Chapter 3: What is the directing style in This Is Us?
Because he's been on this series, small series, Army Wives.
That's it.
That's it. He's available. He's great. So he came in sold, right? While we're making the movie in New Mexico, Sterling is just a...
a star we actually had said you know like i don't know who this guy is but we're working with him forever because he's he's something that's about to happen yeah and uh and we didn't know about darden yeah what happened was this dancing this is the script and we're editing and we're reading things oh this is sterling we just do you know so we we said dan you got to meet with this guy you're the only person we ever put up yeah for uh
There was a stiff wind blowing behind Sterling. And Dan was like, okay, I never really heard of him.
You know, maybe hoping for a name or whatever. But at the same time, Tiffany said you were in the OJ thing. So we thought... We thought, oh, this is great. The studio knows him. Maybe this isn't far-fetched.
It worked out.
It worked out perfect.
It worked out. I appreciate the vote of confidence, gentlemen. And we're working together right now just for folks to know they also directed the pilot of Paradise.
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Chapter 4: What unique experiences did they have on set?
Never got made. Yeah, never got made, but we built our career on just people passed them around and loved the scripts.
Could you guys knock them out quick? Like what's the process? Back then we did, yeah.
What is the process? How did you guys find like, I want to do this and I'm going to do this. Like how did you sort of delineate
Chapter 5: How did This Is Us come to them?
Well, I just wanted to be a director and I didn't think, I never thought I could do comedy. I just didn't think it was appropriate for me. And John convinced me that I was funny. Funny enough. Funny looking. I didn't know that's what he meant at the time. Right what you know.
Let me say this real quick, because one of the important things to realize when you were directed in a John and Glenn episode, and especially when it has like a bit or a comedy thing, like you wind up doing the line as written and then they just stand next to the camera and they give you about 17 different alts that they want you to try.
And you just like take a breath and you're like, and you do the alt or whatever. And they're just like, and they're getting, you can see them just like, okay, say this. Okay, say that. Right? What I want to know is like, because it always seems you guys, no one's ever coming up at the same time to the actors. Do you guys talk at villages? Like who's going to talk to who?
Or is it just the shorthand now to the point where you're like, oh no, I don't want to say this to so-and-so and I'm going to say this to so-and-so.
We check with each other real quick. We usually, one of us has a better idea of what they want and we can kind of sense that like one's more passionate than the other and we back down. Okay. Yeah. And we, early on, we were really conscientious about like not talking over each other.
Yeah.
Because directing teams are so rare in our early career. They were so rare and people were weirded out by it. But now there's lots of directing teams and we have a bit of a reputation. So now we just, you know how it is now. We just come down and like, shut up guys, shut up. I mean, we used to have just one of you talk.
Lobby the DGA to, you know, shoot a movie or... Because they didn't want to give you both credit.
Yeah, tell me about that, because there are several directing duos. There's a lot more, I'd say, writing teams than there are directing teams. Logistically speaking, the unions... don't like that. They don't like to.
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Chapter 6: What behind-the-scenes secrets did they share?
And it was shooting in LA. I mean, it's just like sometimes that's, and we wouldn't have been able to do it if we had kept that movie. So it was just...
And it all sort of like fell into place. It was like, because we were off season, so we weren't in that pilot casting madness. It was like everybody was available that you wanted. And it was, yeah, and all just sort of.
And by the way, you can ask Dan about this. Can you say we said this? Okay. More than anything Dan's ever written, the pilot of This Is Us is a real reflection of his whole life.
Yeah. Yeah.
And you should pin him down about that. Because I read it, and I'm like, Dan, this is not a script. This is you. Because so much of his back story, and he won't want to talk about a lot of it. But it was a beautiful thing. It came straight from inside him and his heart. We knew him well enough at that point to really feel it. It was really great.
That seems to be the, even for those of us who didn't know Dan's story, when we read that script, that we knew that there was something different about that script. And everyone we've talked to has had that same response. More That Was Us after these words from our sponsors. We are getting away next weekend and we're taking the whole family to San Diego to celebrate my dad's birthday.
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Chapter 7: How do they blend comedy and drama in their storytelling?
Okay, okay. Because it does look like he's right in it. No, it's good. It shoots really well.
That's the great thing about shooting on long lenses is it makes... How much planning?
Is it more than the average set up? That was a lot of planning. I'm sure it was.
We had to board that whole sequence just to know what we could get away with and not get away with. We were running out of time.
Board means storyboard. We storyboarded. So every shot was a picture and a storyboard that we could reference. Those art classes were coming back now.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, it's just interesting. We went to art school, and we liked to complain about we were the worst kids in the class. But those lessons we learned in our foundation classes, which were drawing, light color design, and 3D, we use every day when we direct. So it's a good thing to learn about that.
But mainly it was about building that set and making it really safe and making it filled with gas elements, just like you have at the bottom of your barbecue, a gas pipe with all these holes in it that just starts pumping out gas.
So was crew masked in terms of so as to not inhale too much gas? No, it's ventilated. The smoke was created separately.
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Chapter 8: What challenges did they face directing intense scenes?
But there was no roof, so you were just like out in the exposed elements outside.
Oh, it's open up top.
Yes, yeah.
Talking all, okay, I got you, I got you.
Yeah, there's no, so there's no, you can never build up carbon dioxide or whatever. It is so much fun. It was like those kinds of things, like the White House set in Paradise. It's just like, it's just like, it's just a thrill. A kid in a candy store, yeah.
You're like, this is why we became directors.
Okay, so wait, I'm just trying to chronology. You did one and two of This Is Us and four.
No, no, no, one. Just one? Ken did two.
Then they did four.
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