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‘This Is Us’: What Does Toby Do For A Living?

By Victoria Miller
Published on: 23:13 PST, Mar 5, 2017

This Is Us still has several mysteries left to unravel—the big one, of course, is how did Pearson patriarch, Jack, die?—but one of the unsolved questions is starting to become a definite elephant in the room. Seventeen episodes in and This Is Us fans still have no clue what Toby (Chris Sullivan) does for a living.

The guy has the means to keep himself decked in flashy designer duds, and he seemingly had no career conflicts when it came to hightailing it out of Los Angeles for an extended stay in New York with his girlfriend, Kate (Chrissy Metz). So what exactly does this guy do?

While This Is Us fans know Kate was the longtime assistant to her TV star brother Kevin (Justin Hartley) and later found a job as a personal assistant to a woman (Jami Gertz) with a sassy kid (she even interviewed with Toby’s ex for a job at a boutique), there has been no mention of what Toby does to bring home the bacon.

Of course, This Is Us writers gave Toby some unwanted time off via a heart attack storyline, so it’s not as though anyone expects to see him in a high-stress corporate job like Randall (Sterling K. Brown) anytime soon. But viewers would still like to know how Sullivan’s character can afford to take off from work for several months at a time.

Of course, unlike his This Is Us character, Chris Sullivan has a busy career. According to his IMDB profile, before he landed the life-changing role on the NBC drama, Sullivan played ambulance driver Tom Cleary on Steven Soderbergh’s Cinemax series The Knick. Last year, fans also spotted him as diner cook Benny Hammond in the Netflix hit Stranger Things. Sullivan has also guest starred in a string of popular shows like The Americans, Law & Order: SVU and Elementary, and he even had a role on NBC’s Peter Pan Live!. Sullivan is also set to join the Marvel universe as Taserface in the upcoming big screen flick, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2.

In an interview with the website Talk Nerdy With Us, Sullivan revealed he knew early on that wanted to be an actor.

“Once I experienced it, there was kind of nothing else,” the This Is Us star dished. “The only other thing that stuck with me up to college was that I was a competitive tennis player for about a decade.”

Chris Sullivan’s first acting audition came at age 14 when he was a freshman in high school.

“I auditioned and got it,” the This is Us star said. “I had two lines in The Sting. And I have been acting ever since.”

While This Is Us viewers know a lot about Toby’s weight loss struggle and his history with depression, they know very little else about his backstory. It took a heart attack and a hospital scene to even find out that his last name is Damon and that he hails from Palm Springs, California.

While Sullivan didn’t drop any details about Toby’s chosen line of work, the This Is Us actor did tell Entertainment Tonight that fans will eventually get to know more about his character.

“Probably at some point,” the This Is Us star told ET. “If we live through the hole in the heart, we’ll probably get into Toby’s background. Maybe we’ll find out his brother is Matt Damon. I think that’s what we should find out.”

Take a look at the video below to see Toby in action on This Is Us.

[Featured Image by Mike Windle/Getty Images for The Critics’ Choice Awards]

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