- The original title of that episode was Born Lucky.
That's how (beep)ed up This Is Us writers are.
Born Lucky, yeah, as if we need anything more, thank you.
Hello, my name is Michael Angarano.
I play Nicky Pearson on This Is Us and I will be
reading today some emotional tweets.
It's intense, these are all so intense.
It's a good show. (somber music)
It's just a good show.
Yeah, you uh,
if you're gonna want Nick to be OK,
that's gonna be a tough one for you.
Buckle up!
OK, this was another thing.
How could we comprehend now, as (beep)ed up as
the world is, still something like a draft lottery
where you hear a number called as it relates
to your birthday and your life is changed.
You go to war, a war that you don't even know
why we're there or where this place is.
It's not like Google where you can just Google Vietnam.
How could you just put yourself there without actually
having been through it or understanding it?
There was this great website.
It allows you to put your birthday in and it would tell you
if you would've been drafted or what your draft number was
and moment before we shot that scene,
I found this link because I was feeling this
wave of panic as an actor,
like how am I gonna play this?
I found out that I would've been drafted.
My draft number was 157 and Milo's was 13.
And that put it into perspective a little bit
because that feeling for about 10 seconds
after reading that you would've been drafted.
Your draft lottery number was 157.
My stomach sunk and I immediately thought
of my little brother because now,
I wouldn't have been drafted but my little brother
would've been drafted and he's 19 years old.
We get to see Jack grow up to be an old man
and I will say a very handsome old man at that,
still has all this hair.
Very handsome, I know, but, ya know,
it's a very nice sentiment.
Nicky Pearson before the war is a very
different person to who Nicky Pearson is
during the war and I think it's very clear
seeing the way a guy like Nicky who is clearly
very sensitive and analytical and almost intellectual,
somebody like him was affected in the war
as opposed to somebody like Jack who's
very earnest and he's very good at swallowing his emotions
to be this sort of mythical, heroic,
patriarch of this family.
Seeing the way these two guys react to the war
says a lot about who they are as brothers, as people,
and what this war, what it is to a lot of people.
Yeah, Nick is going through a lot of stuff.
I sort of imagined him in Vietnam
in this constant haze of feeling like he's there
and not really there.
In this book Tim O'Brien wrote called
The Things They Carried, he describes this feeling
of being at war, or walking through the mist,
and eventually the mist becomes your enemy
and you can't see in front of you.
You can't even see your own hand or your own feet at times.
So it's this very disembodied feeling that, at any minute,
something could come at you from literally any direction.
No matter what type of research or reading you do,
that's a very difficult thing to comprehend or understand,
but Tim O'Brien's book, The Things They Carried,
really helped me put it into words and that feeling
that Nicky's feeling when he tells Jack,
"You're not here, I'm not here.
"I'm not even here."
To only even if it's just fractionally understand
what that could be like to be somewhere where you're in
a state of constant fear and panic for your life,
what that could do to your nerves.
Yeah, they really know how to do it,
those This Is Us writers, huh?
They really know just how to stick the knife
in your frickin' heart.
Yeah, yeah, ya know,
he's Superman, and Nicky's Clark Kent.
Now, I think that's why a show like This Is Us
is so important and why it's so amazing because
it takes depression and anxiety or PTSD
or losing a loved one, these things that I think
everybody goes through on a day to day basis
and doesn't really talk about it.
It makes it OK to talk about in a public sphere
like Twitter, so that's very nice.
Crying emoji, crying emoji, crying emoji, crying emoji,
crying emoji, crying emoji, crying emoji, crying emjoi,
crying emoji, crying emoji, crying emoji.
I believe that's one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 crying emojis.
Heartbroken emoji.
Jack is gonna assume that guilt.
If we know anything about Jack, it's that he's gonna
assume the responsibility and the guilt no matter what.
Yeah, he really, that did it, that did it.
I defy you to not cry watching Jack cry.
It's impossible.
Crying emoji, crying emoji, crying emoji.
That poor little kid standing up to his father.
I mean, it's just like,
it says so much about these guys
and the decisions that they're gonna make in life.
They're so good at tying up all the loose ends
because Nicky's decision to go to Vietnam is sort of
this very existential call.
There's something in him that goes to Vietnam
because he's Jack's brother and because of that dynamic
between the two of them because Jack
has always protected his little brother from his father,
from life, and this is just something Nicky
feels like he has to do.
Yeah, I'll be damned if that dynamic between him and Jack
wasn't part of the reason to go in the first place.
Thank you so much for watching.
I am Michael Angarano.
This Is Us, Tuesday nights,
and please subscribe to Elle's YouTube page.
Thank you.