I think with actors, we tend to get rid of characters - and not get rid of them as in discard them or throw them away, but it's just that you take that jacket off because you're going to be putting a different jacket on.

People forget that actors are actors, who are looking to put on the clothes and the character, and then shed it just as easily.

Every job built my career in some way or made me grow as a person or I got to meet someone great. I had one line on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, but I met Will Smith and he took 20 minutes out of his day to talk to the kid with one line. To this day, I think that guy is amazing because of that.

I think there's an initial shedding of the skin of a character when you've played them for so long, almost like a snake losing its skin. But when a job is done, I kind of walk away from it because I know that I need to prep for whatever else I'm going onto - I need to get back to being myself, which... Who knows exactly who that is, with all the talking voices in my head. You know, back to being a bit of a blank slate again. It becomes a necessity as an actor - at least for the way that I act.

I tell people, "It's the hardest thing to explain, but it's the easiest thing to understand." And all anybody really needs to know is, the struggles of life, the joy of life, the excitement and the heartbreak of life is something we can all connect to. And I like to hope that the inclusivity of the show [This Is Us] is something that audiences will relate to.

I don't want to impose on anyone else and make anyone else emotional or anything. I tend to quietly cry, kind of turn away.

You have to be able to sustain life. So moments are going to be lighter, but moments are also going to be heavier. I think just the understanding that life goes in a million different directions, and hopefully, if you find excitement by what these characters are experiencing and what they're living through, and you're impacted by them as human beings, then that's the sustainability of the show [This is Us].