‘This Is Us’ and ‘Pitch’ Creator Dan Fogelman Is Super Busy, But He Made Time for Decider Anyway

For producers, TV shows are a lot like sea turtles.

You write a bunch of scripts, some of those scripts get developed, some of those developed scripts get pilot orders, some of those pilots get series orders, and — if you’re lucky enough to actually get on their air — some of them make it past the first month without getting trashed by critics or, worse, cancelled.

Producer Dan Fogelman hit a home run this season — twice. His family drama This Is Us on NBC is the No. 1 new fall show, and his sports drama Pitch on FOX is one of the best reviewed new fall shows. Fogelman took a few minutes to talk to Decider about the challenge of running two shows at the same time, why his alien comedy The Neighbors may have been ahead of its time, and why This Is Us is such a tear-jerker.

DECIDER: Did you have a plan for what you would do if both shows got picked up?

DAN FOGELMAN: No, I didn’t. It’s hard to ever have a plan in this business because things happen so long after their inception and at the same time so fast. There have been times when I’ve had multiple film and TV projects in motion at one time, and you never know when one of those will get picked up. I wrote the script for This Is Us, and we shot it early in the year. It was already completed and done when Pitch came around with [co-creator] Rick Singer and [executive producer] Tony Bill, and we started talking to MLB, sold it as an idea to FOX, and started working on the pilot. So This Is Us and Pitch were at very different times and places.

Are you shooting both shows on the same lot? Are you able to be in two places at once?

We shoot both shows at the Paramount lot and have six soundstages and a bunch of office buildings in the corner of the lot that we’re using for both shows. We have an edit suite with six edit bays going at all times with six different editors, so I’m always working on multiple edits. I rotate between the two writers’ rooms, which are right next to each other. Sometimes you feel like your life is not your own. It’s crazy.

Are you the only writer/producer working on both shows?

I am, yeah. The production company is involved in both shows, but I’m the only writer/producer who works on both shows. I’ve been fortunate enough for the last five or ten years to have multiple projects going on at once, so you start to compartmentalize. Last year, there was a point where I was directing and producing a film and had three TV shows going at once. With This Is Us and Pitch I’m very involved with the writing and editing, but you can never clear the list you make in the morning. When you get one outline or script or edit done, there are six more on the list behind them.

Galavant and The Neighbors were more comedic shows. Did you move into dramatic shows on purpose, or were This Is Us and Pitch just the two that happened to bubble up when they did?

I started primarily in film, and then I started into TV doing some more unusual half-hour stuff, which may have been a little early. It seems like there’s more and more of those kinds of shows on TV now like this absurdist comedy [The Neighbors] and this bizarre musical comedy [Galavant]. I was trying to find a little bit of heart inside of wacky comedic shows, so it was a natural progression to hourlong dramas with some humor in them. Whether a show is a half-hour or an hour, I’m interested in what makes you laugh or how it makes you feel, or that can surprise you that you also laugh. I think comedy and drama are actually very much in the same worlds, but they’re just framed differently.

I think you’re right that The Neighbors was a few years early. Tonally and subject matter wise, it would have made more sense this fall on ABC than it did two or three years ago.

Yeah, I agree. It was actually succeeding — I could talk endlessly about The Neighbors — and getting a lot of credit that was a little too late. It was so unusual and different, and I think it took a while for people to come around to it. In the time it took for that to happen, scheduling and repositioning put it in a tough place to success. It wasn’t anyone’s fault; it’s just a natural thing that happens when something is different. I think we’re at a point now with half-hours that people are willing to take some bolder chances.

The Neighbors ran on ABC for two seasons and was about these very odd, non-threatening aliens living among us with names like Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Larry Bird.

It was about an alien family living in suburban New Jersey. I usually have a pretty good sense after a pilot if something is going to be successful or well-received, and I was shocked at how vitriolic the critical reviews were. It was meant to be silly and absurdist, and a lot of people called it stupid. I thought critics would eat it up but people wouldn’t get it, and the reverse happened at first. People enjoyed it, but the critics were all over it. I think we had turned that around some by the end of the first season.

Do you think the expectations have changed since The Neighbors for certain types of shows to be on certain networks?

I don’t know. I wouldn’t want the jobs that the four people running the four broadcast networks have. It’s hard to ever gauge what’s going to happen or what the rules are. The rules are changing so quickly and the TV world is changing so quickly — content, how viewership is measured — that I’m not sure if there is an answer. My working theory is that if you make something really, really good with a really, really specific point of view and has an idea that people will accept and be drawn to, that’s the only way to have a chance anymore. And that’s a lot easier said than done.

You ended the pilots for This Is Us and Pitch with twists. In future development seasons, are you worried about that becoming your thing or do you want it to become your thing?

It was purely a coincidence that these two shows, which were developed in different ways and at different times, had the reveals at the end of the pilots. What I’ve learned, particularly from This Is Us, is that it’s hard to cut through the zeitgeist unless you can get people talking about a show. The twist brought eyeballs to the show and once they came they lacked it, but I think you start failing if you approach something like that as a technique. I wrote This Is Us and wrote Pitch with Rick Singer because they were ideas that I wanted to write about and make shows about, and it wasn’t about adding twists because audiences like twists. That never works.

Does that make you a manipulative TV writer?

[Laughs.] Whether you’re reading a book or watching a movie or a TV show, we have a long history of stories that play with expectations and shift narratives. When that’s done well and doesn’t feel tacked on, it’s some that people can respond to.

These are both diverse shows in their casting and storytelling, but you have not had a female director on This Is Us and only one on Pitch through the episodes that have aired to date. How much of a priority is that for you?

It’s a big deal for us. We’re very well balanced with directors, and you’ll see a balance of women directing on both shows. It’s a matter of scheduling that the episodes of both shows that have aired have mostly been directed by women.

Chrissy Metz, who plays Kate on This Is Us was cast as a large woman who’s trying to lose weight. That sounds like an uncomfortable, paternalistic thing to navigate. What has the experience been like?

Chrissy is an incredibly funny, brassy person and the character she plays is much more reserved. There are moments with any actor where you have to talk about sex scene or taking their clothes off that’s uncomfortable, but it’s part of what we do. It’s a part of my family history, so it’s something I really want to take the time to do accurately. In real life, you don’t just lose weight overnight.

This week’s episode of This Is Us is sports-related, right?

Yeah, this week’s episode of This Is Us is really special and partially answers one of the big questions of the series and is built around sports — and particularly the Pittsburgh Steelers — as a connective tissue for this family.

I cried a little — like a tiny, tiny bit — at the end of the This Is Us pilot. After looking around online, I apparently wasn’t the only one. Did you think that would happen?

The whole thing about This Is Us making people cry is great, I guess, but it wasn’t intentional or something I would have predicted. I always thought the show would be moving and hoped that the end of the pilot would touch people, but I didn’t expect all the crying. [Laughs.] John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, who directed Crazy, Stupid, Love [which Fogelman wrote], worked painstakingly with our costume designers and set designers to make sure that the ending would work. It’s not just a twist or a reveal; it completely reframes the story and has a very positive message.

[Where to stream This is Us]
[Where to stream Pitch]
[Where to stream The Neighbors]

Scott Porch writes about the streaming-media industry for Decider and is also a contributing writer for Playboy and Signature. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.