That Was Us
The Night We Lost Jack Pearson | "Super Bowl Sunday" (S2E14) with special guest Dan Fogelman
Tue, 18 Mar 2025
We have a very special guest joining us this week for the infamous 214 “Super Bowl Sunday” episode, This Is Us Creator Dan Fogelman! Dan joins Mandy, Chris, and Sterling to chat about the episode where it’s finally revealed how Jack Pearson dies. They break down all the episode details, plus how this episode came to be in the writer’s room, what they did (and didn’t) plan before Season 1, the great lengths the cast and crew had to go to to keep this episode’s secrets under wraps, and so much more! Stay tuned through the end for a special Q&A with Dan! That Was Us is produced by Rabbit Grin Productions. Music by Taylor Goldsmith and Griffin Goldsmith. Follow That Was Us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Threads, and X! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What episode are we discussing today?
On today's episode of That Was Us, we will be discussing Season 2, Episode 14, Super Bowl Sunday. On the 20th anniversary of Jack's death, Randall hosts a Super Bowl party. Kevin, Kate, and Rebecca share their memories of this day and how they've been coping since.
Chapter 2: Who is the special guest on this episode?
Hello, friends.
What's going on? How's everybody doing today? Well, how are you?
We have a special guest.
We have a special guest, everybody. You guys know Mandy, Chris, myself, Sterling, but do you know the man who created the show? Mr. Dan Fogelman, everyone.
Everybody stop. He's back. I can't believe you guys have a live audience now. This is amazing.
We've grown up so much since you were last on.
So, full disclosure, we were going to try to do this episode a few times before. We thought about doing it with just ourselves. And then we said, man, we had to hold on to this secret for such a long time and tease it out. Do you know how Jack passed away? Yes, we know how Jack passed away. People had all these sorts of theories about it.
It didn't feel right to not do it without the man who built up to this moment. So, Fogman, thanks for joining us once again. We appreciate having You okay? You look good. Thanks. He's got his paradise hat on. I just realized. I appreciate that. I'm coming from work, so I didn't even know. Cross promotion.
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Chapter 3: What were the challenges of keeping Jack's death a secret?
It's all paradise hats. Can we get paradise hats?
I can get you a paradise hat. Great. Cool. No worries. No worries. So we're talking about 214. It's the fire. We talked a little bit about it with John and Glenn, who also directed the episode. But talk to us in terms of like... You're known now at this point in time of sort of like building suspense, the turns, the twist, et cetera, and sort of keeping people on the edge of their seat.
What was it like holding on to the secret? Like this is one of the first red scripts that we had in terms of like people not like copying or whatnot, like all of what went into keeping the secret as long as you did.
Yeah, I mean, it was a lot. It was a lot on our writers, I think, and the people that were constantly in charge of distributing scripts. We were so anxious back then. In retrospect, it was probably a little silly. I don't know what we were worried was going to happen that one of the few people who had access to it was going to put it on the internet. I guess that's what we were worried about.
I'm less worried about it now because it's like everything's out there all the time. And so I just remember boards were constantly going down. Our writer's assistants were constantly taking pictures of things. We started realizing that every time we left our office, we were leaving the cards out everywhere that said what happened in the show.
And there were tour groups coming through, and that started freaking everybody out.
Yes. Isaac and Elizabeth told us that.
They're bringing tours through the writer's room.
And they're like peeking the windows, like encouraging people to go like peer in the writer's room.
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Chapter 4: What was the significance of the Super Bowl for this episode?
And in some ways, I think that became our superpower early on, which was we had this propulsive mystery underneath what was otherwise a very intimate, small family drama. We had this big question and mystery that I actually hadn't planned on being
Well, you said this the other day, Mandy, like you were like, once you got to 214, you were like, kind of thank God. Now we can focus on just the lives of the people, right?
Yeah, there was like relief. Like we were just holding onto this secret. And I think as an actor too, like getting through 214 and 215, like the aftermath of like the funeral and everything, it was like, And now this woman can just like put the pieces of her life back together and start putting one foot in front of the other and moving on. There was like so much anxiety of like, how do we do this?
How do we do this? Well, like there's so much anticipation. I felt like there were so many eyeballs on like, how is this going to go? That like once that was out of the picture, it was such a relief.
Until they sow the seed for the next mystery.
Yeah, of course. But it was scary at that time because it had taken on a life of its own. Myla had become this character that people were just like obsessed with, like a TV dad, Jack. His name's Jack. Sorry.
Yeah, I don't know if you remember.
Yeah, yeah. Sorry. And so it had become such a big part of our conversation that it was like, it was exciting to discard it and be able to like focus on what comes next. But it was also really, really scary. Was it the most nervous?
Dan gets nervous. Yeah. Like just, it's part of his nature. Like he loves going on X, looking at scenes, like what people, saying like in real time or what have you. Like it's freaked out. Was this the most nerve wracking for you?
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Chapter 5: How does the episode depict the fire incident?
and Chrissy can't talk cryptically to Sully, Kate can't talk cryptically to Toby anymore about what happened to her father without saying it. So we lost that magic trick on episode 14. And I think a lot of shows might've tried to pull it out longer. And I was of the mind of like, this is where it should happen.
Yeah, there was a moment they even wanted to change our scheduling in the second season of the show. If you guys remember that, when they wanted to put us, change our night. Change our time slot. And I threw a conniption. But the main way we won was by me saying like, no, I have a very specific plan of like, when we're going to do Jack's death, it has to be on the Super Bowl.
This would ruin the plan creatively. And I was able to like win the day on keeping us on Tuesday nights because of that argument.
When did you know that this was going to be the show that this episode was going to precede?
The Super Bowl. I started asking for it right away. Oh, wow. When we were like, I don't remember. I mean, I knew going into season two we would. But I just started asking for it right away.
Because you knew the Super Bowl was going to be on NBC that year.
I knew the Super Bowl was going to be on NBC. I knew we were laying in that the family was a family of football fans.
Yeah.
We had established like the terrible towel and the pilot and all of that. And it was just, you know, it was network TV. And there was a lot. I just wanted that slot for something big and particularly for that episode. Yeah.
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Chapter 6: What emotional moments stand out in the episode?
Yeah. We knew the pilot was special. We thought we had something. And then it was just, you know, every indicator before we even aired was just, this thing was just like kind of like under, I'm not a very spiritual guy. I'm certainly not a very religious guy, but it was like, it was almost like this thing existed.
It was just kind of waiting for us to all come along and do it because the stars aligned over and over and over again in so many ways on it that it was pretty nuts. But yeah, I, It was right away. I mean, it was right away. The Super Bowl episode that we're talking about was definitely probably the pinnacle of that experience.
I mean, when we all went to the Super Bowl that year in real time and you guys did, was Fallon after the Super Bowl. We did Fallon afterwards, yeah. That was so fun. And I remember being on the plane. I just remember being out to dinner and I remember... and one of you guys, maybe Milo, had come to dinner with me and my brother-in-law who I'd brought out with me. Okay. And it was like pandemonium.
It was pandemonium. Like, remember Biden was there. Yeah, we met Biden. He was a nice president at the time.
We did.
It was crazy. And then we went and hustled over and you guys did the Tonight Show. And it was like the Super Bowl. I brought my brother-in-law who was very excited. He was a New England Patriots fan. And he's like kind of like just a great guy from Rhode Island, from Boston. And he like left the... I think the green room of Fallon, because he just almost couldn't take it.
It was like getting too overwhelmed. Like the size of the whole thing was so big that he's like, I think I'm going to call it. Like it just felt nuts. It all felt nuts. And then I remember flying home on the plane and getting internet service and the studio and network were all calling that gazillions of people had tuned into the Super Bowl.
It was just, that was like, that was kind of for me, like the height of like the pandemonium right around that period.
Did you approach this episode differently knowing that there were going to be more eyeballs on it? And perhaps eyeballs that like, they weren't like, I know the show was successful, but like, you know, you get new people tuning in that maybe have no idea who the Pearsons are. So like, does that make you sort of think differently about how to approach this?
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Chapter 7: What is the impact of Jack's death on the characters?
I want everybody's dynamic to be great and clear and to kind of get a moment of the seven of you guys.
The editing and the structure of the show is such a big part of the show, right? It's part of the musicality of the show. It's part of the reveal. It's part of the excitement. It's part of the mystery, all these things. And that is, I know that you have a big editorial team, but we have spoken in here quite a bit about the musical magic of your... Yeah, your fingerprints on every episode.
Dan Fogelman's editing on this show. And like you're talking about in this specific episode, how you started, the delicate nature with which you introduce characters so that people who are watching the Super Bowl can also watch this show. How did you learn how to do that?
How did you develop that ability? I made a lot of stuff early in my career. Like those, the early shows I made, I got that opportunity to be in the edit bay and kind of learned how it worked a little.
it was a play i feel overwhelmed directing because i don't always have the lingo and i don't know camera lenses and i don't know i still get confused about a long lens you know what i mean and i i never felt intimidated in edit bay somehow um because i just was like putting a puzzle together it's something i really i think i like yeah so you've been involved
in the editing of your projects from the beginning. From the beginning. Not my films, although I've directed now two films, but earlier in my career, I got to make a bunch of TV shows that didn't really cut through, but I was making 22 episodes and you just start learning.
And a lot of people, when they get their one chance to make a TV show, don't have that experience, you know, so then they aren't ready for it maybe when it comes. So it took, you know, I started making stuff when I was 25, 26. Even the animated films, I was heavily involved in sitting with the directors and the edit bays and everything. And so I think you start learning.
And it's just, it really isn't, editorial just requires like kind of like knowing what you like and what you don't, pacing. It doesn't need, you don't, if you have editors you trust, which I do, you don't need to know the lingo or be able to, that's always the thing that holds me back is not having a formal film or television education, but it never held me back there.
Like I was just watching the opening of this episode that we're talking about. And I was watching the scene where Milo and Mandy are in the hospital room after the fire. I can't remember what happens in every episode, but I can remember every edit almost. It's a weird thing. And I don't watch the show often.
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