Editor’s Update: In September 2020, Mandy Moore announced she's expecting her first child with husband Taylor Goldsmith. The baby is due in early 2021.
While you might first remember Mandy Moore from her "Candy" days, the Golden Globe-nominated actress and singer-songwriter has recently won acclaim for her starring role in the hit show, This is Us. In case you haven't jumped on the bandwagon, this heartwarming, gut-wrenching show follows a couple and their children over several decades—and Moore plays the mom, Rebecca. While Moore isn't a mom in real life, she talked to Parents.com about her plans for a family someday—and what the show has taught her about motherhood.
On Starting a Family
Moore joined the campaign Her Life. Her Adventures, which encourages women to be candid and open about their own hopes for family planning, whether the timing is right to become a mother right now or in the future. Not only does the campaign aim to start the conversation around birth control, egg freezing and fertility, but it reminds us that not every family is built the same way, much like the party-of-five fam in This is Us. Moore isn't ready to start trying to conceive right now, but she says she "definitely" wants to become a mother.
"…I'm not sure when. Right now, my main focus and priority is my career but that won't always be the case," she shared. "I have so much admiration and compassion for Rebecca. I think that she is not a perfect mother, whatever that definition may be. I think she's flawed and she's made some really difficult choices that not everyone's made in their life. I think she's pretty fantastic. Her family is everything to her."
Portraying a Mother for the First Time
Over the past several decades, Moore has played everything from a terminally-ill teenager to the long-haired Rapunzel in Tangled, but for the first time, This is Us gives her the chance to play a different type of role: mom. "I've never portrayed a wife or mother before. I've been lucky enough to have the opportunity to play this character from 22 to 60, and sort of have this unique lens of her life from so many different crossroads—the choices she's made and how it's reflected in present day. It definitely has me thinking about my own life, the choices I've made and how family planning factors into where I see my life going."
How This is Us Shaped Her Views of Motherhood
Though she technically didn't raise triplets from birth, Moore says the very process of playing a mom with a stressful, busy and complicated family dynamic has given her an even deeper appreciation for all that mothers do, especially those who raise multiples. "I have unending respect for mothers in general but mothers of multiples specifically. This is a woman who's doing it pretty much on her own. She has a husband who had a great deal of responsibility at the office and wasn't home to help out as much as I think she was expecting him to, which may have created tension in their marriage," she shared. "To think that she was doing this really without any help is beyond admirable. I don't know how women do it."
How This is Us Breaks Stereotypes
Moore says she's thankful for This is Us for reminding viewers that while things don't always turn out how you plan, they always do turn out. "…I think the show really reflects that a family doesn't have to necessarily look how you imagined it initially. I love its depiction of family. It's really a group of people who love and support each other unendingly, but they're not without flaws. Family doesn't necessarily have to come in the package that you first expected."
