This Is Us: See the audition scenes for Milo Ventimiglia and Chrissy Metz

This Is Us returns to NBC for a third season next week, but the network will return to the beginnings of the hit family drama tonight with the one-hour special “The Paley Center Salutes This Is Us.” The special features interviews with series creator Dan Fogelman and stars Milo Ventimiglia, Mandy Moore, Sterling K. Brown, Susan Kelechi Watson, Chrissy Metz, Justin Hartley, and Chris Sullivan. In addition, you will see footage from the new season and the cast’s auditions. Here, in a sneak peek of the special, you can observe the audition scenes for Ventimiglia as Jack and for Metz as Kate.

One of Ventimiglia’s scenes was the delivery room scene in the pilot, in which Rebecca (Moore) is in labor with the triplets and Jack is extremely determined to have a positive outcome today. “I read the scene and I could see Dan in the back of the room literally just smiling,” Ventimiglia tells the camera, “and I was thinking to myself, ‘Okay, I think I must have done my job.'”

Check out the clip above to see Ventimiglia tackle his scene and for Metz to explain her quickly changing frame of mind as she walked into her audition.

The season 3 premiere of This Is Us airs Sept. 25 at 9 p.m. ET.