00:00hey everybody this is us we're doing a deep dive into the episode about randall's mother and
00:21we have such a special group of people on this because we have the writers of that episode
00:27of course with the amazing sk brown sterling k brown but we also have kayo yegun and ebony freeman
00:35who are the writers of this episode uh that goes into the deep dive about randall's mom
00:40so let's hit it ladies just let's just talk a little bit about what the process was like
00:46of writing this story this love story and this history about randall's family and really going
00:51into this part of his life which we haven't talked about we really haven't seen before but we left
00:56everybody on this amazing cliffhanger when we see his mom grasp her air after everybody thought
01:01she had died what was it like to like open this up and now create a life for this woman
01:05i'll just say i think um when we started talking about what this episode would be when we started
01:13breaking the story for this episode i feel like that was some of the most fun i've had like working
01:21and breaking an episode i mean we just we had our core little group and um it what what made it so
01:29fun was we could just our imaginations could literally go wild because you know all we know
01:37we've only learned um very little about you know laurel about randall's mother and so it was really cool
01:45to be able to kind of have a blank slate to work off of and to fill in all of those rich details and
01:51to make her this fully realized person and i mean gosh we laugh about all the time i mean the episode
01:59literally spans her entire life so it was just it was a massive undertaking to fit that in 45 minutes of
02:08television hour worth of television um but it was it was a lot of freaking fun i will say
02:15yeah it was a good time we had fun
02:19this is our director ladies and gentlemen
02:33since we're on the subject of directing what was it like to then write and direct this k it was good i
02:44think it's one of those things where it's kind of a uh it's different from most of our our directors
02:50on the show that this is uh an experience where a lot of times you are given someone else's vision
02:55you have to go into it and you know uh follow that vision but in this situation it was kind of like
03:02the from beginning to end we had earlier prep time because there was so much of it that we knew and
03:08could sort of like put together it was great it was great it's been you know you you work on the
03:13show you know the people crew you have a very clear sense of what you want no nerves always nerves
03:20but nerves are you know do it with nerves you got the nerves you you know the way our show is you
03:26shoot it and then three days later it's on screen so it's just sort of like nerves or no nerves you
03:31know you gotta go so it's just do it so sk the story of randall has been slowly unfolding for like
03:39five seasons and then you see this thing about your mom what was that like what was that journey
03:46like what is this like for randall to put this piece of the puzzle together um all right so i can
03:51comment sort of as randall i can comment as sterling i remember when dan first said something i was like
03:57this brother's mother is alive are you kidding me like what are we about to do now like i i was i was
04:03deeply sort of concerned but not really because i i have ultimate faith in our writers i was like
04:08the shark is not about to jump over something here like i like are we gonna meet this woman and she
04:13gonna be have been living in philadelphia this whole time and just be like yeah i've been watching
04:17no like i didn't know what it was going to be um and then i read it and i was like okay so i was like
04:25she has passed away because the first thing you think of is like what is the justification for
04:31being absent this whole time right if she could have been a part of this young man's life why did
04:39she choose not and i think they did a really wonderful job of answering that question and then
04:46in terms of the story like there's there's so many things that randall's had to make peace with
04:52over time um his father's absence and then his ultimate coming back into his life and then his
04:58passing away and how personally he takes everything like is there something he could have done or should
05:05have done to have changed things to make them better what have you and so at a time where he feels kind
05:10of like at peace with it all another piece of the puzzle sort of introduces itself in a way it's like
05:16all right i thought all the pieces fit together like this and now i'm getting another piece of
05:23information that could sort of unravel all the other pieces that i put together and he's sort of just
05:29hopeful that it doesn't unravel it and hopefully makes it richer and ultimately it does
05:35so
05:47you
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