An audience gets to hang onto the characters for the rest of their lives if they want. I think it's great that the fans do that. It's just not too practical for a man like myself because I have to move on.

If you have your mind in the right direction, and your heart is full of the right kind of stuff, you'll succeed and you'll triumph over adversity, over really anything.

I felt like it was something that didn't represent how I wanted to present myself. Now I'll see kids I come across on Twitter or Comic-Con, and they'll smile and I'll be like, "You have a crooked mouth like I have a crooked mouth!" We just sit there, and I talk about it with them and they feel better about themselves.

It's [high school] an interesting time in your life because you're trying to act older and mature but you really have no idea what you're doing. You're scared and it's okay to be scared. It's okay to not know completely what you want or what you should be doing and to stumble a little bit.

I think there couldn't be a more perfect time with the state of the world than to come together and share an experience - especially an entertainment experience like This Is Us - to say, "You're different, and I'm different, but we all agree that life should be lived. You should be happy, and we're all deserving of joy."

I don't feel the pressure to deliver an unrealistically great man to the screen; I just want to be honest to who my character is on the page. If I can reflect that and put some heart into him and make him real, then I think I've done my job, and I think that people will like who he is.

I'm tough on the outside and soft on the inside [...] I'm really a shy guy.