If you’re anything like me, you may be seeking comfort during these unsettling times in the form of nostalgic TV shows and movies. Mandy Moore definitely gets it and is here with the content you need right now as we start another week of isolation.
The singer-actor and her husband, Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes, have taken to performing music sets on Instagram Live from their home. Moore has been doing songs from her latest (excellent) album, Silver Landings, along with many other classic covers. But on Sunday, April 5, Moore brought out the big guns—emotionally speaking—when she sang “Only Hope” from her famous teen tearjerker, A Walk to Remember.
If for some reason you’ve never seen the movie, based on Nicholas Sparks’s hit novel, it follows the love story of Jamie, the sweet preacher’s daughter who’s battling leukemia, and Landon (Shane West), the popular bad boy forced to join the school play after getting into trouble. You can imagine where things go from there. In one of the movie’s pivotal moments, Landon starts to realize the true depth of his feelings for Jamie as he’s on stage with her during the play. Jamie is famously singing “Only Hope” during this scene—so to hear Moore belt it out again on IG brought on all of the feels.
Check it out for yourself below; it’s beautiful.
Fans were beyond excited.
This scene is super meaningful to Mandy Moore as well. “The most memorable scene [in A Walk to Remember] for me is the school play and singing the song ‘Only Hope,’” she told Entertainment Weekly in 2017. “I remember putting on that beautiful ice blue, silk dress and everyone fawning all over it. It was the first time that I wasn’t in a ratty sweater and an oversized housedress.”
Long before Mandy Moore was yanking at our heartstrings and racking up Emmy nominations as Rebecca Pearson on This Is Us, she was one of the biggest popstars of the early aughts. If her first single “Candy” hasn’t been stuck in your head for the past two decades, there’s a nostalgia-fueled new show coming to reacquaint us with Moore’s early career on the pop charts.
Audiences will get to relive an interpretation of Moore’s meteoric rise to fame with 90’s Popstar, a TV show coming to ABC. Deadline reports that the show, which has a pilot commitment, will follow a plot loosely based on Mandy Moore’s early stardom. In it, a Florida teen becomes a pop singer seemingly overnight—leaving her and her family to navigate a wild new reality.
The show’s teen singer is inspired by Moore, who signed a recording deal with Empire Records in 1999, when she was just 15 years old. You know the rest of Moore’s story: Her first album, So Real, went platinum, and she reached her first Billboard Top 30 Single with 2000’s “I Wanna Be With You.” Despite her connection to the forthcoming show’s source material, Moore reportedly won’t be playing any of the characters on the show. Instead, she’ll be behind the camera as an executive producer.
One look at the names joining Mandy Moore on 90’s Popstar, and you know this show is going to get emotional. The script is being written by Amanda Lasher, who’s hailed over TV successes including The Bold Type, Gossip Girl, and Riverdale. The rest of the behind-the-scenes team for 90’s Popstar includes This Is US showrunners Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, who’ll join Moore as executive producers.
Casting announcements and an expected air date haven’t been shared for the pop stardom vehicle quite yet. But with Moore lending a hand, it’s safe to say her new show is going to be good. Until the new show airs, Moore will be busy with This Is Us. NBC announced in May that it ordered three more seasons of Moore’s popular drama.
Mandy Moore surprised fans on Instagram Thursday (March 7) when she debuted her new bob haircut. The look, done by Garnier consulting hair stylist Ashley Streicher, is beyond chic: slightly darker than Moore’s normal hair color and styled in loose, beachy waves.
“Surprise! I got a chop,” Moore posted to Instagram yesterday alongside photos of her new hair, taken by Jenna Jones. “I stayed true to my brunette roots, so I wanted to make a big change with my cut.” (The color, in case you’re curious, is Garnier Nutrisse Shade 53 and it’s less than $10.)
See Moore’s post for yourself, below:
The This Is Us actress decided to switch up her hair for two reasons. Her first one is pretty standard. “I just got done with work,” Moore told Access Hollywood in a new interview. “I have to look a certain way for eight months out of the year, so I’m like, ‘Celebrate! Do something different.'”
Her second reason, though, is more emotionally charged, and one anyone who’s been through a particularly fraught experience might relate. A few weeks ago, Moore was one of several women featured in a New York Times article detailing misconduct allegations against musician Ryan Adams. Moore and Adams were married for seven years, and during their relationship she says he was psychologically abusive toward her. Changing her hair, Moore says, helped her close that dark chapter of her life—which she had to revisit for the article—for good.
“The last couple weeks have been sort of—I’m not going to get emotional—have been emotionally turbulent in a way,” she said. “I think there is something significant about shedding dead weight and moving forward.”
Watch Mandy Moore explain this for yourself, below:
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Moore says the support she’s received since coming forward about Adams has been overwhelming in the most positive way. “I’m happy that people—women, specifically—who have been in abusive situations of any form feel seen and heard and recognized,” she says. “That’s what I was most surprised about by speaking out: feeling like other women were like, ‘Thank you. I’m encouraged to come forward now.'”
With a starring role on the hit series This Is Us, Mandy Moore is arguably one of the most talked-about actresses on television today. That exposure comes with its ups and downs, of course—but when it comes to the seemingly inevitable rumors of plastic surgery that celebrities come up against, Moore has a firm message for speculators.
Moore says she’s well aware that there’s chatter about “getting work done,” but she’s not backing down from giving a response. (Even though, for the record, no celebrity owes the public an answer or explanation for the decision to have plastic surgery.) In a conversation with Popsugar, the actress addressed rumors that she had plastic surgery with humor and honesty. The big takeaway? She doesn’t give those rumors any more attention than she needs to.
“I remember seeing some blog post that said I got a nose job,” Moore said in the interview. “I was like, ‘That’s weird—my nose is pretty imperfect.’ I have a crinkled part underneath the bridge of my nose and I remember laughing like, ‘I feel like I would have fixed that had I had a nose job.’ I don’t know, maybe it was just a weird picture or weird makeup or shading or something.”
Moore went on to share that those rumors are pretty pervasive in her industry: “People think everyone in Hollywood has had a nose job or some work done, but it’s not always true. People are going to believe what they want, and that’s fine,” she said. “And if having work done is going to make somebody feel better about themselves, then more power to them.”
In previous interviews, Moore has discussed becoming more self-assured as she’s grown up in Hollywood; now in her thirties, she’s said that the only person whose opinion matters to her now is her own. “You give less of a shit about how the world perceives you,” she said in her November 2018 Glamourcover story. “Now it’s more important to me to be self-satisfying. And I’m better at that. It just comes with time.”
Anyone who knows Mandy Moore will tell you she’s the nicest person they’ve ever met. Interviews refer to the 34-year-old as “America’s sweetheart” and “ the friend you’ve always wanted.” And while she appreciates the platitudes, they also make her a little uneasy. “I think those particular descriptors prevented me from finding momentum, workwise, because people saw me in one light,” she says. “There’s more to who I am.” Moore was only 15 when her hit song “Candy” debuted in 1999. She toured with *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys and starred in beloved teen movies like The Princess Diaries and A Walk to Remember. She wasn’t a tabloid fixture like her peers Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera, which gave her freedom to build her film résumé (Saved!, License to Wed) while still releasing music.
But there was personal upheaval behind the scenes. When Moore was 23, her mother left her father after 30 years of marriage for a woman. Moore discovered the relationship by accident, during a Christmas trip to North Carolina in a plot twist worthy of This Is Us: While setting up a laptop for her mom, she saw an email draft addressed to her. “I thought, Why is Mom writing me?” Moore says. “It was basically her telling us how she had fallen in love with a friend and was going to leave Dad.” It was the family’s last vacation together. Moore’s reaction was to protect her father, but as time passed—and through plenty of therapy—she came to understand her mom’s decision. “At the time I was left with no choice but to compartmentalize what was happening,” she says. Now “everyone is in a much better space, and they’re with the people that are better suited for them. All of that is a very happy ending, but it didn’t come without real struggle.”
What came next: Moore married musician Ryan Adams. “I couldn’t control what happened to my immediate family, but I could control starting my own.” She pauses, then adds, “Not the smartest decision. I didn’t choose the right person.”
Their marriage ended six years later, and Moore was ready for a new chapter. She felt “spiritually and fundamentally stuck” leading up to the divorce, and her career and friendships suffered for it. “I don’t feel guilty for it. I don’t fault myself for it,” she says of the divorce. “When people said, ‘I’m sorry,’ I was like, ‘No. Sorry would have been had I stayed in a very unhealthy situation.’ I didn’t. I found my way out. And when I did, things opened back up again.”
One of those things was This Is Us, which came at a time when Moore felt her career was at a standstill. She plays matriarch Rebecca Pearson, which often puts her at the center of the show’s deeply emotional storylines. “I’ve never been a part of something that means so much to the outside world,” Moore says. “It means just as much to all of us.”
It’s why Moore feels as wowed by the show now, at the start of season three, as she did when it premiered two years ago. “This Is Us has allowed me to show people that I’m not perpetually stuck in the realm of teen romantic comedies,” she says. “I’m a woman now. I’ve been married and divorced. I’ve had ups and downs, professionally and personally.”
Another thing that opened back up? Her love life. She met fiancé Taylor Goldsmith, front man of folk-rock group Dawes, in 2015. (It was a truly modern meet-cute: She posted a photo on Instagram praising the band, and Goldsmith contacted her to say thanks.) “I was still dealing with the trauma of my divorce when we started dating,” she says. “Taylor was steadfast in his support—that was a huge sign for me.” They’ve renovated a home together in Pasadena, and Moore tears up as she talks about getting married “later this year.” “He makes me melt. I can imagine no better partner,” she says. “He’s going to be the most tremendous father. I view the past as a stepping-stone to get me where I am today. I would gladly weather all of that a million times over if it brought me to Taylor again.”
Yes, kids are in the picture, but don’t pressure her about it. “Maybe it’s true [about the biological clock], but fuck that narrative,” she says. Besides, the couple hopes to adopt, “so that will be a part of our lives, God willing.” Moore also plans to return to the recording studio. “I feel ready now,” she says. “I allowed other people’s perception of who I am and what I should be doing and how I should be doing it to permeate my relationship to music.”
Milo Ventimiglia, who plays her onscreen husband Jack, sees how she’s moving past her self-proclaimed “people pleaser” title: “She likes people happy, but she’s not a pleaser,” he says. “She just cares. She truly cares, both about the work and the experience.”
Moore has other goals for the future, including writing, directing, and producing. “If I’m not going to take advantage of the doors that have been opened because of This Is Us to shape the stories that I want to see,” she says, “then what’s the point? After years of not being able to find things that I felt challenged by, it’s really cool to potentially be in a position to find material and help create it.”
Whatever happens, though, Moore thinks her thirties and forties will bring good things. “You give less of a shit about how the world perceives you,” she says. “Now it’s more important to me to be self-satisfying. And I’m better at that. It just comes with time.”
Season three of This Is Us is on NBC now. Jessica Radloff is Glamour’s West Coast editor.
Don’t miss Glamour’s other two November 2018 cover stars Susan Kelechi Watson and Chrissy Metz
This story originally appeared in the November 2018 Issue of Glamour.
Solo Cover: Cushnie et Ochs blazer. Jennifer Fisher studs. For Moore’s smoky liner, try Maybelline New York Lasting Drama Matte Eyeliner in Jet Black ($6, drugstores). Get tousled waves like hers with Garnier Fructis Root Amp Root Lifting Spray Mousse ($4, drugstores). Hair: Jenn Streicher, makeup: Ashley Streicher, both at traceymattingly.com; manicure: Michelle Saunders; set design: Bryan Porter; production: Viewfinders.
Mandy Moore is having one hell of a good year. She’s on a beloved TV show (This Is Us, of course). She’s got a fabulous new kitchen remodel. Oh, and she’s also been busy scaling the 19,341-foot tall behemoth known as Mount Kilimanjaro.
In early April, the singer and actress made her way to Tanzania, where she hiked Mount Kilimanjaro alongside her fiancé Taylor Goldsmith and friends. She Instagrammed the entire journey because did it really happen if you don’t have pics to prove it?
“There’s nothing more empowering than realizing that we are all capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for,” Moore noted in a post.
Clearly, the journey left a mark. So, to celebrate the trek, Moore got a teeny, tiny tattoo on her foot in the shape of Mount Kilimanjaro.
“The mountain. Forever commemorated. Thank you @winter_stone for the reminder of what we accomplished,” Moore shared in an Instagram post alongside a photo of her new body art.
According to People, Moore wasn’t the only one to get the mountain-themed tattoo. Her friend and fellow climber Chase Weideman got the same design, only his was placed on his leg instead of his foot. “I lived on her. And we survived off of and on her, and I walked every step all the way to the top of her, with my best friends,” he wrote in his Instagram post.
Since her climb, Moore has posted a number of images remembering just how much she loves her adventure buddies and the mountain itself. “I miss the mountain already,” she wrote in a post one week ago. “I miss the daily rituals and customs that became forever ingrained in the fabric of what this experience was; the ‘water for washing’ every morning and evening, our instant coffee at breakfast, the constant peels of laughter at all of the inside jokes, finding the rhythm of packing and unpacking at every new camp site, the high fives and pleasantries and shorthand exchanged with our porters…. I also miss the simplicity of it all.”
She further explained that she’s been trying to apply the principles she learned on the trip into her regular life because this journey was about “so much more than simply checking off some item on life’s To-Do list.” Hopefully, now she’ll remember those lessons with every step she takes on that new tattoo.
