This Is Us producers have finally addressed Kate’s (Chrissy Metz) positive pregnancy result that had viewers of the NBC series scratching their heads following the last episode of the fall season back in November.
In a flashback scene, a teenaged Kate, in a relationship with her abusive boyfriend Marc (Austin Abrams), was seen in her bathroom with an ovulation predictor package in her hand. She was later seen looking down at a pregnancy stick to find that the results were positive. This story unfolded as Kate told her husband, Toby, (Chris Sullivan) a secret no one in her family knew in the episode titled “Honestly.”
Fans were unsure if the character checked to see if she was ovulating in order to have a baby or if she was assessing if she was indeed pregnant by her unstable boyfriend.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly , the show’s executive producer Isaac Aptaker put the rumors to rest.
“It’ll be good to put it to bed because our fans are so awesome and pick up on every little hint,” he shared. “As soon as we saw that people were misinterpreting, of course it drove us crazy. So let the record officially show: That was [meant to be] a pregnancy test box.”
“This one, unfortunately, was just a casualty of how absolutely impossible it has been to make television this year,” he said of the gaffe. “Despite the dozens of people who stared at that scene countless times before it went to air, we were all just so fried from all of the COVID [filming conditions] that we missed that one.”
He also shared that tonight will be really important in learning a little bit more about the whole psychology of Kate. He called “ The Long Road Home ” episode beautiful and said they were proud of the way it unfolded.
The show’s executive producer, Elizabeth Berger, explained that the mistake was due to Zoom editing. She said that usually, all the crew was together in a bay, looking at giant monitors. She said that everyone was working so hard during these crazy times, so once in a while, there would be an ovulation predictor when there should have been a pregnancy test box.
Fans will get to jump right back in to where This Is Us left off in November with Kate and Tony having a difficult conversation. The showrunner said that Kate’s backstory will be explained right off the bat. This moment between the couple comes after they met and got to know their surrogate Ellie (Annie Funke), who will carry their child to term and give son Jack a sister.