Milo Ventimiglia has admitted he was the first person to swear at Mandy Moore while filming a scene for their family drama show, This Is Us.
The Gilmore Girls alum recently appeared on the This Was Us podcast, where he revealed there was a “heated” scene between his character, Jack, and his wife Rebecca, played by Moore. As the actors pretended to argue on set, they both chose to not follow the script and ended up swearing at each other.
“So I’ll just start by saying, of course, Mandy Moore is one of the kindest human beings. She is who you all see her to be. Lovely, kind, beautiful, wonderful. Mandy Moore has never been cursed at in her life,” Ventimiglia said.
Moore then chimed in, laughing as she said: “Yeah, no one’s said ‘f*** you’ to me.”
Ventimiglia continued: “In the middle of a take, things were kind of going in a direction. I think I, as Jack, was feeling it. I was a little defensive. I think you might have dropped an F-bomb, then at one point in this back and forth, at the very end of this chasing around, I was just like, ‘F*** you!’
“And I kind of had started to look away, but Mandy had literally [put] her finger under my chin and pulled my face back… You said, ‘Look me in the f***ing face!’” he recalled.
“It got hot. It got a little heated. Listen, sometimes you just have to go there,” Moore explained.
Although the actors thought their version of the scene was “incredible,” it did not air on television because of the swearing restrictions on NBC. But Ventimiglia did admit he saved the footage, and he still has it to this day.
The This Is Us actors starred alongside each other for six seasons, before the show’s final episode aired in 2022. Despite being married on the show, both Moore and Ventimiglia are married to other people in real life.
Last year, Ventimiglia married Jarah Mariano in a secret ceremony after one year of dating. During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, he admitted that he was aware of Jarah’s inadvertent connection to his Gilmore Girls character, Jess Mariano. Ventimiglia portrayed the bad boy love interest of Alexis Bledel’s Rory Gilmore from 2001 to 2007, as well as in the 2016 Netflix spin-off, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.
“It’s a very easy connection to make,” he told Kimmel at the time. “I’m sure there’s a few broken hearts… Female and male, I don’t know. Maybe? The point is there’s a lot of life, and there’s a lot of Milo Ventimiglias out there.”
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As for Moore, she’s been married to Taylor Goldsmith since 2018. They share three children: August “Gus” Harrison, born in 2021; Oscar “Ozzie” Bennett, born in 2022; and Louise Everett, born last month. She was previously married to musician Ryan Adams from 2009 to 2016.
Following the birth of Moore’s first child, Ventimiglia gushed over his former co-star’s parenting skills.
“I’ve said it so many times, but Mandy and Taylor are just the most lovely people, and the kind of people you want to be parents, raising someone, especially considering what the world is,” he told Entertainment Tonight in 2021.
“Knowing they’re in charge of someone that will make a huge impact, hopefully, in the world, it’s exciting. I’m just super excited [to be] supporting the two of them. Whatever the kid needs for the rest of their life, I’ll be there,” Ventimiglia said.
“As I understand it from other friends who have kids, it’s like the second your baby’s born your world changes. You are at that point now living for that new life, so I imagine things have changed for Mandy.”