Caution: Spoilers for the This Is Us season three finale ahead.
This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman was spot-on when told us the last five minutes of the season three finale are as “big and sprawling and epic as we get.” After much back and forth, Randall and Beth finally were on the same page with plans to move to Philadelphia, where Beth will open a dance studio and Randall will continue his political career. Kate and Toby brought baby Jack home from the NICU. Rebecca and Miguel were preparing to move to Los Angeles. And Zoe and Kevin broke up when it became obvious they’ll never be on the same page about having kids.
Then things got really interesting. In the future, we learned that Beth and Randall are still together (thanks for the season-long anxiety about that, writers!) and Kevin has a pre-teen son. Kevin’s also seemed to be doing well for himself, as evidenced by that sprawling house the Pearsons gathered at to visit an ailing Rebecca.
Speaking of Rebecca, she looked like a fraction of her 60-something self, complete with long white hair and an emotionless expression. When Randall entered her room, he heartbreakingly had to remind her who he is. (Does this mean she’s suffering from a form of Alzheimer’s disease?) At her bedside wasn’t her husband, Miguel, but Jack’s estranged brother, Nicky. (Who, by the way, was looking much better in this future timeline.)
Oh, and future Kate? She was nowhere to be found. When Toby mentioned Jack, he said “they’re on their way.” But that doesn’t mean he was talking about his wife. And, if Kate is alive, it doesn’t sound like Katoby are an item still. (Anyone else notice that Toby wasn’t wearing a wedding ring?)
With our heads spinning and our hearts racing, we called up executive producers and co-showrunners Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger to fill us in on exactly what’s going on in the future. Read on.
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Glamour: Let’s start with the basics: How many years in the future are we when we see Rebecca lying in bed?
Elizabeth Berger: We haven’t decided exactly how many years in the future we’re at, but we’ve imagined it as roughly 12-15 years.
Yes or no, Rebecca has a form of Alzheimer’s or dementia?
Isaac Aptaker: Possibly. Or possibly this is someone near the end of their life experiencing a lack of awareness and confusion that comes with extreme old age.
EB: We can’t say exactly what’s going on with her, but we will be learning exactly what’s going on with her as we move forward in our story.
How close to death is she? Is it a matter of hours, where everyone is gathering to say goodbye?
IA: I think it definitely feels like she’s very near the end of her life and that her passing is imminent and that’s why everyone has decided to descend upon Kevin’s house.
We see Nicky sitting at her bedside. Does Rebecca think Nicky is Jack? If she does have a form of Alzheimer’s, a lot of people remember the past better than the present day.
EB: It’s a totally cool theory and totally possible. Obviously we can’t say what’s going on until we learn more of what is going on with Rebecca, but it’s a very interesting take on it.
Nicky has also aged better than anyone else.
IA: That wasn’t an accident. We wanted the read to be on Nicky that though he is older, we’re seeing a guy in a better place than when we last left him. The fact that he aged really well shows he’s in a much better place mentally and physically than when we left him in that trailer.
For weeks, the cast and producers of This Is Us have been teasing tonight’s episode as a game-changer, and now we know why. After a season of anticipation, Kate finally gave birth to her son, who she (unsurprisingly) named Jack. The wait is over!
Actually, waiting was pretty much the theme of this entire episode. Appropriately titled “The Waiting Room,” most of the 41 minutes was spent watching Rebecca, Miguel, Beth, Randall, Kevin, Zoe, and even Madison waiting in the hospital as Kate goes into premature labor. The waiting room was basically a character in itself—which makes sense, given the episode was written in an actual hospital waiting room. “Bekah Brunstetter [the writer] wanted to get all those weird little details that came across in the script by actually putting herself in the real situation,” This Is Us executive producer and co-showrunner Isaac Aptaker says.
But much of the episode doesn’t involve Kate as much as it centers on each character’s own crossroads in life. Rebecca and Miguel contemplate moving cross-country to be closer to Kate and the baby. Beth fears giving up her new teaching job to suit her family’s needs. Kevin continues drinking…and lying to Zoe about it.
Ultimately, Kate and Toby’s son is born 10-12 weeks premature. While he—and the rest of the family—prepare for a tough fight ahead, executive producers/co-showrunners Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger fill us in on what’s to come, and how tonight’s episode came to be.
Glamour: Kate and Toby’s baby looks extremely lifelike, but it’s very difficult to film with a baby so tiny. How did you manage those scenes?
Isaac Aptaker: We brought in a very talented team of artists that create incredibly lifelike, accurate-to-size premature babies that are operated by a variety of animatronic and puppeteering devices. It’s great for our actors, because it’s not done afterward on computers. They’re able to look at this baby, which really looks like a baby, and emote off it.
The baby was born at 28 weeks. What can you say about any physical or developmental delays?
IA: We don’t want to give anything away, but when we’re telling a story like this we are aware of how sensitive it is and how triggering it can be. We know many people have dealt with experiences like this, so we’re trying to be realistic and sensitive to that. Nothing is going to be drawn out just for TV’s sake. There’s going to be lots of answers coming very, very quickly, and we’re just trying to respectfully and accurately tell something that isn’t seen enough on TV, in our opinion, because of how many people it affects.
What kind of team did you bring in to make sure you were accurately telling this story?
IA: My girlfriend’s aunt runs a NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) in Pennsylvania and has a ton of information to offer on this. She got on the phone with us for hours and answered all of our questions. Then, on the day we filmed those scenes, we had medical technicians and consultants. We also wanted to hear the personal stories, so we brought in a couple of moms we knew personally who gave birth prematurely to hear what it was like, emotionally and anecdotally for them.
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Kate and Toby name the baby Jack. Will we see Rebecca’s reaction?
IA: We actually don’t see the immediate reaction because of how the timing works in next week’s episode, but I think we can assume that Kate checked in with Rebecca before she made it official, and Rebecca feels really good about it.
You like drama? Stories with strong female voices? Shade in spades? Then Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings are the show for you—oh, also because they’ll directly, and significantly, affect your life. Unfortunately, this bit of must-see TV airs when most everyone’s working or watching their kids, so we’ll be here to recap each day of these monumentally important proceedings.
Here’s the good news about Brett Kavanaugh, who looks likely to be the country’s next Supreme Court justice: He is great on carpool duty! Also, probably an attentive listener at parent-teacher conferences! This much, we have been told.
All week, during his confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh was painted as the nice guy. We heard about his commitment to hiring and mentoring women, his standing volunteer date at a local soup kitchen, and his passion for coaching girls’ basketball. All week, Republican senators, Kavanaugh’s colleagues, and the judge’s own unfailingly polite demeanor reminded us: This is a normal man. This is the dad next door.
The theme reached its saturation point today, when Rebecca Taibleson, a former clerk of Kavanaugh’s, pointed out that he’s a “regular at his local bar, where he’s partial to a Budweiser and a hamburger.”
I like beer and hamburgers and nice people. After watching over 30 hours of Kavanaugh-TV, I am thoroughly sold on the fact that he is a hoot at a neighborhood BBQ.
PHOTO: Drew Angerer
But here’s the bad news for anyone concerned about reproductive freedom, unchecked presidential power, or common sense gun reform: He refused to address his views on any of them. I heard his jump shot extolled this week, but based on what I’ve seen, it’s nothing compared to his duck. He dodged just about every opportunity to say something of substance.
Perhaps the most bizarre example of this: Kavanaugh repeatedly name-checked four landmark Supreme Court decisions, calling them “the four greatest moments in Supreme Court history.” But whenever someone asked him if these personal faves of his were “correctly decided,” he refused to say. Great, but not correct? Sounds like a MAGA hat went to law school.
Is there a protocol-related reason that might make Kavanaugh feel unable to confirm that something he just said is great is great? Maybe. But is it possible that this is all comical, tragic shadiness? I’m just a regular gal who likes Budweiser and beer, so what do I know?
And that’s not the only question I have. As a result of this weeklong shade brigade—brought to you by your own taxes, by the way—I still have several questions about Brett Kavanaugh, and you should too.
What was the point of all that relentless branding of Kavanaugh this week? Being nice to women and following precedent is to Kavanaugh as Calabasas is to Kim Kardashian—in other words, essential to his new brand. This was driven home hard all week. In the short term, this was likely meant to pacify whichever American women aren’t protesting his nomination yet. But it has a second, long-term purpose. If Kavanaugh gets on the Court, and casts ice-cold votes against women’s health interests, he’ll want us to remember that as a dude, he actually loves women. Awesome, cool. I’ll think of him fondly when I have to smuggle my birth control in from Toronto.
But wait—does he always follow precedent? If you ask him, abso-frickin’-lutely! (Frickin’ is for sure as crass as this guy gets.) But if you ask other knowledgeable parties: Not so much, especially when it comes to matters of same-sex marriage and abortion. When questioned on both topics, Kavanaugh repeatedly referenced specific decisions as the legal last word on the subjects—even though there were more recent cases expanding or clarifying the Court’s opinion on them. If that sounds complicated, you can read more about it here—but suffice to say that Kavanaugh has a curious habit of deferring to cases that happen to match his conservative beliefs, rather than the most current rulings. Convenient.
So, with that in mind—would he vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, or not? Judiciary Committee members tried, to no avail, to get a straight answer from him all week. Ten million times, Kavanaugh referred to Roe as “settled law”—though, characteristically, he would not say whether he believed it was correctly decided—and for some time, that chorus of “precedent on precedent” seemed, on its face, reassuring. But while Kavanaugh’s poker face never broke down, his show of sureness on the matter did. First, a leaked email from his time working in the White House seemed to indicate that Kavanaugh doesn’t really think Roe is all that airtight. Then, in what felt like perhaps the loudest indication of his own personal views from the entire proceedings, Kavanaugh referred to various kinds of contraception as “abortion-inducing drugs.” And perhaps that’s no big deal! Happens to all of us, right? We wake up, panicked, and we text our best friends, “Oh shit! Forgot to take my abortion last night!” Could be an honest mistake. Who knows.
Okay, so—what could this guy have possibly told Senator Susan Collins (R—Maine), a key vote in his confirmation and a firm advocate of choice, to reassure her that he won’t gut abortion rights? Hard to say. If you’re a Maine resident and want to talk it over with someone from her staff, call (202) 224-2523 and press 0 to be connected.
Does Kavanaugh really believe that a sitting president can’t be investigated or indicted? Kavanaugh went out of his way to say that “no one is above the law,” and reiterated over and over the importance of an “independent judiciary,” but he evaded all Trump-related questions under the guise of wanting to “stay three zip codes away” from political matters. Fine.
What should concern us here is the same thing that’s concerned us since it was announced that Kavanaugh would be the Supreme Court nominee: Despite what his pals and coworkers would have us believe, he’s not coming into this nomination with a reputation for measuredness. On this issue, he’s coming in as a potential presidential appointee, culled from a short list of options, and what seemed to set him apart from everyone else was his stated belief that presidents shouldn’t have their days interrupted by investigations. Kavanaugh had the opportunity this week to assuage the country’s collective raised eyebrow on that one by firmly asserting that he wouldn’t let presidential power go unchecked. He simply didn’t do it. He wouldn’t tell the committee whether he’d recuse himself in Trump-related matters.
Furthermore, as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D—Rhode Island) pointed out, he may have chosen his words carefully to create an “escape hatch” that would allow him to spare President Trump from having to appear before a grand jury by differentiating those circumstances from ones that eventually led to President Richard Nixon handing over the infamous Watergate tapes. Clever.
How good of a friend would Kavanaugh be to the NRA? Uh, BFF-level, it seems. Claiming a blind loyalty to precedent once again, Kavanaugh more or less confirmed that he would be unlikely to vote for the regulation of semiautomatic weapons or the future regulation of 3-D printed weapons. He hinted at his personal ideas about how to deal with America’s mass-shooting crisis when he talked about his daughters’ (private) school: “They do a lot of things now that are different than they did just a few years ago in terms of trying to harden the school and make it safer for everyone.”
Wasn’t there something in the mix about him doing something sketchy with emails?Yes, though the implications are unclear. In the early 2000s, while he was working in the Bush administration, Kavanaugh was the recipient of some strategy intel on several Democratic congresspersons. As he testified this week, he didn’t know that the information had been stolen in a hack of the congresspersons’ emails. But Kavanaugh’s emails from back then—which leaked this week—make that theory seem kinda hard to believe. Much of the information that was passed on to Kavanaugh was still labeled “not for disclosure”—meaning that he wants us to believe he saw that and thought, “Well, shucks, I guess the Dems didn’t want anyone outside their office to see this except for me, a guy working in a Republican White House. Two points!” And, um, the subject heading of this one is literally “spying.” Anyway, seeing as double standards don’t exist, I’m sure we’ll be hearing cries of “But his emails!” any second now.
Lastly: Why was Kavanaugh taking notes with a Sharpie all week? Sir! What do you have against the other side of the paper?
Megan Angelo writes about TV and is the author of the novel Followers, which will be published in 2019.
The invite list to the royal wedding is kept to an intimate 600 people, not including the 2,640 normals (such as myself, in a better world) who will be spectacle-ing on the grounds of Windsor Castle. That’s fine and all, but when you’re an institution as extensive as the British monarchy and surrounding aristocracy, those seats get filled up pretty quickly.
Apparently, Rihanna is clued into this, and, humbly, didn’t really think she’d be invited. Sure, Rihanna and Prince Harry might have met in 2016 at a Barbados National HIV/AIDS Commission event, but Rihanna didn’t think that alone warranted an invite to the royal wedding.
PHOTO: Chris Jackson – Pool/Getty Images
PHOTO: Chris Jackson – Pool/Getty Images
Fast-forward to 2018, and a reporter asked her if she was going to the big bash. Apparently Rihanna is too busy being fabulous—and also literally busy!—to know the royal wedding is coming up: “So is it really coming up? Like, soon or something?” she said.
“Yeah, in a week,” the reporter replied.
“Oh shoot!” she responded. “See, I need to stay on the Internet more.”
The reporter then promptly asked, “So you weren’t invited?”
She, being humble, was like, “Why would you even think I’m invited?”
The reporter might or might not have been caught off-guard and responded, “I don’t know. You met [Prince Harry].”
And then, Rihanna said jokingly, “OK, you met me. You think you’re coming to my wedding?”
The reporter then said, “Maybe!” and Rihanna asks if she’s invited to hers. “I mean, you’ll get the invite,” she responds.
“Oh, girl,” Rihanna replied, before flipping her gorgeous hair.
This time we asked the large group of women to think about the kind actions other people have done for them. And as you can imagine, the answers run the gamut. While some of the actions these women recall are relatively small (getting a card from a friend after a bad day) and others are pretty big (parents paying for your college education), it’s clear the gratitude felt by each woman is equally strong.
Here are some of our favorite answers (though, honestly, they’re all incredibly sweet and worth watching the full video to hear):
“My mommy taking me to school every day.” —age 5
“They played with me when I had nobody to play with.” —age 7
“When I was asked to become a godmother.” —age 16
“My parents paying for my college tuition. I owe them big time.” —age 20 (This one was understandably repeated several times by women of all ages.)
“My stepfather taking responsibility and taking care of me.” —age 28
“One of my friends gave me transportation fare and lunch for three weeks while I started my new job.” —age 30
“My boyfriend kept track of the mileage I ran on the treadmill.” —age 43
“My husband paid off all my credit card debt.” —age 52
“My parents…giving me life.” —age 54
“Somebody made a YouTube video for me, telling me how great my life has been.” —age 60
“Forgive me when I did something wrong.” —age 66
“Small things—taking my shoes to the shoemaker without asking me.” —age 67
“Someone said to me that I should go see a cardiologist, because my heart was in bad shape.” —age 70
Though they’re certainly no statistically significant sample, it’s fascinating to hear how our perspectives change over the course of our lives and what we consider to be “kind” during different parts of our lives. If you’re interested in watching more videos featuring these women answering other questions, check out these other prompts:
We all know the drill: You’re in the dressing room at your favorite boutique or staring at the screen of your go-to online shop, trying to decide if that new dress or pair of shoes is actually a good idea. You start doing the math in your head about whether or not it’s a financially reasonable (or at the very least not totally insane) idea.
Of course, the simplest version of that math is dividing the price on the label by how many times you think you’ll wear the item—typically called the cost-per-wear equation. But we’ve also been known to fudge those numbers in our favor from time to time, especially when we’re thisclose to an impulse buy we know probably doesn’t make sense. That’s why, for our all-new Money Issue, we’ve created a handy Cost-Per-Wear Calculator that’ll give you a more accurate number in seconds, after asking a few simple questions that provide a more comprehensive picture of your real-world costs. Think of it as the 2018 version of those women’s magazines quizzes of yore, but easily accessible from your laptop or phone in a quick click.
Not only did we want this calculator to be easy to use, we wanted it to reflect your actual lifestyle. For example, that means honest answers about how long and often you plan on wearing the item—because, frankly, not every piece is meant to last forever and we should all admit that. We’ve also taken into account typical dry cleaning and shoe repair costs like reheeling and suede protection where applicable. Our algorithm even takes into account how many seasons during the year you’ll realistically use your new item.
So think of this calculator as your very logical friend, who never judges but always gives you real talk. Then go forth and enjoy your new stuff—or the extra cash in your account.
