Milo Ventimiglia on the big This Is Us connection you won't see on The Company You Keep
When Milo Ventimiglia walked off the set at the end of filming This Is Us, he didn't take one of the director's chairs that he and the cast would sit in. Instead, he grabbed one of the plastic-and-metal blue folding chairs that the crew members used. "I wanted to remember the crew," he summed up at the time.
Turns out, he'd wind up with a few more reminders of them. As in: their presence every day on set. Indeed, Ventimiglia was so enamored with the extended family of This Is Us that when he began working on his new ABC drama The Company You Keep — in which he plays a con artist named Charlie who falls for undercover CIA agent Emma (Catherine Haena Kim) — he began recruiting as many crew members as he could to join him on his new adventure.
"As this show was taking shape when we were developing a pilot episode, I was walking around the This is Us set [on the Paramount Studios lot in Los Angeles], quietly having conversations with department heads: 'Hey, you think you'd want to come on board and do this?'" he tells EW. "And people are like, 'Yeah, I'd love to.' I talked to [the] hair-and-makeup [department], I talked to camera [operators], I talked to the grips and the electrics. Seeing the same familiar faces that are loading lights and loading gear and keeping the set safe is really important to me."
In the end, a large chunk of the TIU crew stayed with him on the Paramount lot — where Company films — including director of photography Yasu Tanida, composer Siddhartha Khosla, costume designer Hala Bahmet, hair department head Michael Reitz, and makeup department head Zoe Hay. ("There were three departments I could not get because they were still finishing up This Is Us and we were already prepping," notes Ventimiglia.) The prevalence of familiar faces on the Company set was appreciated by the crew. "I remember day one of the pilot, our key grip, Chris Stadler, and another Chris [Conahan], our rigging grip, were talking about setting something up for a shot. I walked in just to say, 'Good morning,' and Chris Stadler said to me, 'Wow, man, you actually brought the whole crew back!' And I was like, 'Yeah, of course I did!'"
The benefits went beyond feel-good familiarity; it helped to create a shorthand during the pilot shoot. "One, it sets up a positive environment," shares Ventimiglia. "Two, it sets up a reliable environment. I don't have to think about any of my departments that I worked six years with on This Is Us, because I know their level of quality. I know their level of creative. I know their level of respect to those that they're working with. It gave us such an advantage to know the machine already worked…. And now, we're hitting a stride where my crew is becoming everybody else's crew. Catherine was like, 'Milo, it's so great you brought your crew from This Is Us.' I said, "This is your crew. You will look at them as your crew, and they look at you as your crew. Just give it the time.' And everybody's feeling that."
After wrapping up This Is Us, Ventimiglia endeavored to take on a new role that felt wholly different from Jack. (In other words, no fantastic fathers, no devoted husbands.) But given all of the TIU alums behind the camera, one can't help but wonder: Will viewers see some of that show's actors appear on camera at one point? Might a former Pearson family member pop up as a grifter or target?
"It's funny, Justin Hartley's name already came up for something, but of course, he's cutting together his pilot [The Never Game] over at CBS," says Ventimiglia. "I just traded messages with Mandy [Moore], she's in New York on [Dr. Death]. I read stories of [how] everybody else [is] busy, you know? I'm sure at some point people will pop up."
One cast member already has — but behind the camera. Jon Huertas, who directed two episodes of TIU, will helm the show's fifth episode. "I can't tell you how comforting it was to see [Jon] pop up in the prep schedule on emails, talking about character, talking about story, talking about shot lists," says Ventimiglia. "It goes back to knowing that we have a crew at such a high level, I don't have to worry about it."
Ventimiglia's character will have plenty to worry about in this 10-episode first season. Charlie is running cons with his mother, father, and sister (this is a family business of grifting) and he's trying to shield his identity from Emma. (And with her job being a national security-level secret, she's doing the same with him.) "Everything is going to get in their way, including themselves," the actor sums up of this unlikely couple. He had plenty more to say about The Company You Keep as a part of EW's 2023 TV Preview.
The Company You Keep premieres Feb. 19 on ABC.
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