This Is Us has some gorgeous new key art to kick off its third season. NBC has released the previously announced portraits by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, according to E! News .
The portraits by the world-renowned photographer include solo shots of This Is Us stars Milo Ventimiglia, Mandy Moore, Sterling K. Brown, Justin Hartley, Chrissy Metz, Susah Kelechi Watson and Chris Sullivan, as well as two group photos of the cast. The gorgeous portraits will be used for marketing materials for the hit NBC drama’s third season.
Annie Leibovitz is a self-proclaimed This Is Us fan. Of the legendary photographer, who in the past has photographed everyone from John Lennon to President Barack Obama, This Is Us star Mandy Moore said, “It’s pretty humbling to think she’s watched every episode of our show.”
Annie Leibovitz photographed the This Is Us cast in late July in a lavish photo shoot at the Pearson family cabin. Fans saw a behind-the-scenes look at the session, which marked the first time in more than 10 years that the renowned photographer shot portraits for a television show, according to Variety . Before the This Is Us shoot, Leibovitz shot the cast of The Sopranos in 2005.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bmyy4sPlD9K/?hl=en&taken-by=nbcthisisus
The This Is Us shoot also marked a rare appearance by Milo Ventimiglia’s Jack Pearson alongside the adult versions of his TV kids, the Big Three (played by Justin Hartley, Sterling K. Brown and Chrissy Metz).
Because Ventimiglia’s character died when his kids were teenagers in the late 1990s, the actor usually works in flashback scenes with the child and teen versions of Kevin, Kate, and Randall (played by Parker Bates, Mackenzie Hancsicsak, and Lonnie Chavis as 10-year-olds, and Logan Shroyer, Hannah Zeile, and Niles Fitch as 17-year-olds). The younger versions of the Big Three were not present for the Annie Leibovitz photo shoot, but ’80s era Papa Pearson certainly was.
This Is Us fans are familiar with the Pearson family cabin, which was shown in both flashback and present-day scenes during the NBC drama’s first two seasons. Moore told Variety that the photo shoot had a “dreamlike quality” to it because mom and dad Pearson are with their grown children in the photos while the characters “exist” in different eras.
“It’s sort of a bucket list thing,” Moore said of the fantasy This Is Us photo shoot.
For more on the This Is Us cast’s iconic photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz, check out the video below.
The third season of This Is Us premieres Tuesday, Sept. 25 at 9 p.m. on NBC.
