The marriage of Rebecca (Mandy Moore) and Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) on “This Is Us” seemed too perfect.
She described him as her “superhero.” He has surpassed all television expectations as a great husband and dad. Therefore, it must be time to introduce a spy in the house of love.
And if he plays the piano, even better.
Enter Ben (Sam Trammell), a musician who first invited Rebecca, his ex, to sing with his band in a local club. The collaboration has proved so successful that the band has been asked to tour. What could go wrong on the road? Leaving Jack to care for their triplets (Kate, Kevin and Randall) would be an imposition, but Rebecca doesn’t exactly come clean about her intentions, and Jack hears of her plans second-hand.
“I found out you were going to go on tour with your ex-boyfriend,” Jack says on Tuesday night’s episode. “You shouldn’t have lied to me.”
Trammell, who achieved a measure of fame as Sam Merlotte on HBO’s long-running vampire melodrama “True Blood,” acknowledges his role as a potential homewrecker. “Ben’s taking her away. Jack’s the ultimate family man. Good dad, good husband,” says Trammell, 46. “I don’t think Jack likes Ben at all.”
The show’s writers didn’t just decide to send Ben and Rebecca out on tour — they also decided the pair should sing a love duet. That wasn’t a problem for Moore, who’s sold millions of albums as a singer/songwriter. But Trammell, who has never sung professionally, was nervous when producer Ken Olin asked him to give it a shot. He took three or four voice lessons and the show’s composer dropped the key of the song to better suit his range. “Then Mandy shows up and says, ‘I’d rather do it in a higher key,’” says Trammell. “I could see her in the glass booth just killing this song. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m next.’ I had to sing a couple of steps higher. I was able to get by by the skin of my teeth.”
The actors lip-synched to their recorded vocals when the scene was filmed but the sparks were flying. “When you’re looking at somebody and singing with them, it’s like you are definitely talking to each other,” says Trammell, who was already a fan of “This Is Us” when he was offered the part of Ben. “It’s a pure show about families,” he says. But the Louisiana-born actor also respected what everybody was doing. Trammell and his wife, actress Missy Yager, are parents to five-year-old twin boys, Winston and Gus. So he’s in awe of what Jack and Rebecca were up against on the series, raising triplets.
“With twins, the chaos is exponential. When our guys were zero to three years old, if one of us left the other alone, it was like you were going to war,” Trammell says. “You have to do the bottles at the same time. You have to put them on a schedule or you’re never sleeping. I cannot conceive of triplets. That’s above my pay grade.”
While Trammell would not share whether he and Moore share a kiss at the end of their duet, he reveals that Ben will appear on more than one of the show’s four remaining episodes, including the March 14 season finale. He says he has not yet been asked back for Season 2, should the show’s multiple timeline structure include more flashbacks to the Jack and Rebecca tour. “Maybe the writers are still figuring it all out,” he says.
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