This Is Mandy... Now

With the megahit drama This Is Us, Mandy Moore has firmly shed her pop-princess vibe to embrace a bolder, ballsier attitude. Evidence: her candid answers to Cosmo’s questions about love, sex, and asking for what you deserve.

- Laurie Sandell

If there’s one thing you’ll get from NBC’s hit heart melter This Is Us (well, besides tear-streaked cheeks), it’s that a seemingly happy life can be a flimsy cover for a shitstorm of drama.

The show’s Pearson clan looks like a pretty content nuclear family—but the loving wife and mom of three is restless AF, the doting husband has a booze problem…and that’s just the tip of the dysfunction. As matriarch Rebecca Pearson, Moore strays far from the roles that, earlier in her career, capitalized on her pop-princess persona (see Tangled, A Walk to Remember, The Princess Diaries). Her portrayal of a woman grappling with adulting feels grounded in reality…perhaps because it is. After all, Moore knows something about how complicated life can get. When she was 23, her parents’ late-in life divorce—occurring after her mother came out as a lesbian (Moore’s brothers, Scott and Kyle, would also later come out)—upended her tight-knit family. Then her own nearly six-year marriage to musician Ryan Adams collapsed, just as she was contemplating quitting Hollywood to either focus on singing or switch gears completely and move back to Florida. But that was then, and this is Mandy, right now: Golden Globe–nominated for the role she almost didn’t go for. Engaged to rocker Taylor Goldsmith, the front man for Dawes. And happy. Truly happy. “I know myself better now,” the 33-year-old tells Cosmo on a sunny winter day in Los Angeles. “I know what I want and what I deserve.” (Spoiler alert: That may include sex in the backyard....)

COSMO: Marriage is a major theme of the show. What was your own parents’ union like?