NEW PHASE
Mandy Moore Wants to Be in an Oscar Film — and for #MeToo to Hit Music
Acclaimed actress talks her new role in Dr. Death, why she’d return to This Is Us in a heartbeat, and the ugly ways pop stars used to be treated
In the last nearly 25 years, Mandy Moore has grown up in Hollywood as her fans and audiences have grown along with her. They’ve watched her rise as a pop-culture icon, from early movies like A Walk to Remember and hit singles like “Crush” to her recent success as an Emmy-nominated actor on This Is Us. A lot of pop stars and actors from her era have come and gone, but her longevity across music, TV, and film has proven that there’s only one Mandy Moore.
Most recently, Moore stars in the second season of Dr. Death, a limited series streaming on Peacock. Based on a true story, Moore plays investigative journalist Benita, who falls in love with a con artist of a doctor, Paolo, played by Edgar Ramirez, who kills his patients despite posturing as someone who can save people with his miraculous procedures. When Benita eventually catches wind of what’s going on, she helps take him down.
Moore didn’t plan on jumping back into work so quickly after giving birth to her now one-year-old son Ozzie. The actor tells Rolling Stone that she was at home nursing her baby and also taking care of her toddler when the opportunity to act in the Peacock series presented itself. But after reading the scripts for the first two episodes, she says she began to more seriously contemplate moving her family across the country from their Los Angeles home to film in New York for five months and start this new era of her career. “Why not?” she thought.
“I was looking to do something different and this checked all those boxes. I also think it was helpful not to be so precious about what came next because if I really stewed on it, I probably would still be sitting around not knowing what to do next,” Moore says. “I’m glad I jumped headfirst into the deep end. It was so different from what I had lived for the last seven years.”
There were only a couple of weeks in between Moore saying “yes” to the project and actually filming her scenes, allowing for a limited amount of time to prepare. She still managed to do her fair share of research; Moore says she listened to the podcast the show is based on, read news stories about the real-life drama, and she even spoke to an investigative journalist about their process “to get a lay of the land of what it takes to have the responsibility of a job like that.”
“You’re not playing an actual, real person in every role but for me in this case, it was very helpful and enlightening to listen to and read the original source material,” explains Moore. “I found that to be very helpful and addictive. I was like, ‘Wait, what? How did this happen?’”
Moore’s son was only six weeks old when she filmed Dr. Death, bringing Ozzie on set with her and taking care of him in between takes. It wasn’t the first time she went right back to work after giving birth; she also filmed This Is Us shortly after having her first son, Gus. It’s not a simple feat to be a woman and mother in Hollywood navigating a film set with a baby, but Moore says she felt supported and lucky to be able to juggle both.
“It is wild to go back and forth from shooting a scene or doing a take and then nursing a baby,” Moore says. “I’m very grateful for that time that I was able to be with him. Also, women are badass. The fact that we just make it work and figure it out wasn’t lost on me.”
Dr. Death is Moore’s first project since This Is Us went off the air in 2022. The popular family drama ran for six seasons, premiering in 2016 and starring Milo Ventimiglia, Sterling K. Brown, Chrissy Metz, and Justin Hartley. The show was a hit with both viewers and critics; Moore received a Golden Globe nomination in 2017 and an Emmy nod in 2019, while the cast took home the SAG award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series in 2018 and 2019.
It hasn’t been easy for Moore to leave This Is Us behind. She says she misses her character, her cast, and knowing how rare it is to feel so fulfilled on set.
“I miss This Is Us immensely. I miss the experience. I miss the work. More than anything, I miss the people. I miss my friends. I miss our crew. It was such a singular, formative experience in my life that it makes moving on challenging, which is why when something like Dr. Death came along, I was like, ‘You just gotta do it,’” Moore says. “Because I knew when This Is Us was ending and even while it was still happening, there’s never going to be another experience like this ever where the work means what it means to us and to an audience. It’s such a lightning-in-a-bottle thing. To try to find it again feels like a fruitless effort, so you just have to switch your mindset and have a different criteria.”
Moore misses This Is Us so much that she didn’t hesitate to say she would happily jump at the chance to get involved in any iteration of the show again, whether it’s a reboot, a movie, anything.
“If they could figure out a way that made sense and everybody else wanted to do it, I feel like for most of us it would be a resounding, ‘Yes,’” Moore says. “I’m not sure how much aging makeup we’d have to use or even more prosthetics, but I would be so down anytime.”
Before her success on This Is Us, Moore appeared in a number of iconic films in the 2000s. She played mean girl Lana Thomas in The Princess Diaries in 2001, acted in the cult classic A Walk to Remember in 2002, was in 2003’s How to Deal, then in 2004 she starred in Chasing Liberty as well as Saved! When she looks back on those early movies now, she says it was such a long time ago that it “feels like it happened to someone else entirely.”
“I’m really grateful for those experiences and mostly grateful that I’m still around somehow. Even as a kid at that time in my life, I thought about what success meant and I remember thinking about longevity, as long as I can just keep doing this, I don’t know in what capacity, but it was all I ever dreamt about and all I ever wanted. I was like, I don’t want it to go away,” Moore says. “It’s ebbed and flowed for sure, but the fact that we’re in 2023 and still talking about those movies, that’s so crazy. That’s what I feel most proud of: I’m still here and someone’s still giving me a job.”
In retrospect, Moore says she’s proud of her long-lasting career and the opportunities she had at such a young age. But when she was in the moment making some of these films, she also thinks back and remembers, “I had no fucking idea what I was doing.”
“I was such a newbie. Poor Shane West had to tell me exactly how to hit my marks. I was so nervous showing up to set every day and making sure my lines were memorized. I had fun working but I don’t think I was confident enough in what I was doing or what I brought to the table to really enjoy myself. I was too nervous about making sure that I got things right,” she says.
A Walk to Remember, a romantic drama about two teenagers based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, is one of Moore’s favorite projects she’s ever worked on. Starring alongside early 2000s heartthrob West, Moore plays the role of Jamie Sullivan, an outcast in her high school who’s also the local minister’s daughter. Jamie falls in love with West’s character, bad boy Landon Carter, while the two of them are rehearsing for a school play. Things take a tragic turn when Landon finds out Jamie is dying of cancer, but the unexpected couple spends their last months together happily in love. They even get married.
Filming A Walk to Remember in Wilmington, North Carolina, was a uniquely special experience for Moore compared to the rest of her roles. Not only was this her first time being away from home and on location to film a movie, but Moore says she also loved the original book, the story about Jamie and Landon, and the experience of working with that specific cast.
“Even before it came out in the world, when I was making the movie I was like, nothing will ever feel this way again. It was so special, maybe because it was my first big opportunity and leading role,” Moore says. “It wasn’t until This Is Us that I had that same feeling again. I feel very lucky that I’ve had two of those experiences in life.”
The film has had remarkable staying power in the hearts and memories of nostalgic millennials who showed up to see A Walk to Remember when it was released in theaters, and is currently streaming on Peacock.
“[We’re] 20-some-odd years removed from when it came out and people still have an affinity for that movie and watch it to this day,” Moore says. “Different generations have found it and loved it. My 13-year-old niece loves it, and that’s very special to me.”
Tangled is another flashpoint in Moore’s career. Voicing Rapunzel in the animated Disney film allowed Moore to check off a major bucket list item; after growing up watching classic Disney movies, she never dreamt she could end up being a Disney princess herself.
“I started singing because of The Little Mermaid. I would walk around my house all day singing songs from that movie. Then, years later, to do a movie where Alan Menken wrote all the music too is just a crazy, crazy concept,” Moore says. “I had done a fair bit of voice acting before and whatnot but this was a new endeavor to be a part of something on this kind of scale. I loved it and I’m really proud of that movie. It’s also fun for kids to still be discovering it. Having little ones now who are not remotely interested in Tangled but who have friends his age that are is pretty cool.”
When the Screen Actors Guild went on strike from July until November, Moore picketed outside of Walt Disney Studios in Burbank and made headlines when she spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the residual checks she’s received for appearing on This Is Us based on the show’s streaming deal with Hulu. According to Moore, she’s made as little as one penny to 81 cents. Residuals for actors’ work on streaming services was a major point of contention when SAG members renegotiated their contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Moore says she spoke out about the issue because she’s “in an incredibly privileged and rarefied position as an actor” who’s seen success and has a platform.
“I’ve made a wonderful living at this and I was only speaking to the fact that as someone who was on a hit TV show for six seasons, if these are the kinds of residual checks that I’m making, what kind of regular working actor who theoretically lives off of residuals, or should be able to live off of residuals, or at least make some sort of livable wage, how can they expect to even meet that threshold of making enough money to qualify for health care in our union?” Moore says. “It’s impossible.”
It’s been almost 25 years since Moore released her first-ever single, “Candy,” in 1999, kicking off her career as a pop star and entertainer. That same year she also toured with NSYNC and then the Backstreet Boys, opening for the two popular boy bands at the height of their success, and released her debut album So Real. At just 15, Moore was coming of age in the public eye. When she looks back at that moment in her life, she says she sees “a really shy performer who felt very out of place in some ways.”
“I was so enamored with this opportunity and couldn’t believe that somehow I found myself in this position, but it wasn’t a natural fit at first. Having said that, I think I was also fearless because you can be pretty fearless at that age. You don’t really know enough to know to be scared of anything,” Moore says. “I signed this record deal, I made a record, I made a music video, and then I immediately flew out to start opening up for NSYNC on a summer amphitheater tour.”
Reflecting back, Moore says she “had no qualms” about performing on stage in front of thousands of people “without batting an eyelash.”
“I think I was nervous about being in the recording studio and then I worked through that. But if it came to performing live and being on stage now, I would absolutely shit my pants,” she shares.
The world has changed a lot over the course of Moore’s career. In the last few years, there’s been a national conversation reevaluating the way young famous women in the early 2000s were depicted in the media and perceived by the public, prompted by the 2021 The New York Times Presents: Framing Britney Spears documentary.
“I am glad that there has been this reckoning because I think many, many women and plenty of my contemporaries were not treated fairly or with the respect that they deserved at the time. Not even just by the media, but I think by the public in general,” Moore says. “I think there’s definitely a good conversation to be had around all of that.”
I am glad that there has been this reckoning because I think many, many women and plenty of my contemporaries were not treated fairly or with the respect that they deserved at the time. Not even just by the media, but I think by the public in general.
When it comes to her own specific experiences as a young famous woman in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Moore says she feels lucky that she “escaped some of that same scrutiny” as the likes of Spears, Aguilera, and Simpson. The way Moore remembers it, she wasn’t as popular as her fellow pop stars and since she wasn’t as successful, her personal life wasn’t as scrutinized.
“Maybe because I was younger, maybe because I was boring or because I didn’t have the same story to tell. I also didn’t have the same degree of success that someone like Reese Witherspoon, Britney [Spears], Christina [Aguilera], or any of those girls had,” Moore says. “They were older and they were maybe in an adult world in a way that I wasn’t… I just think because I was younger and because I was kind of boring and lived a quiet life and had my parents with me, it just wasn’t apples to apples.”
“If we all look back and you look at all the interviews that people gave and things that they were asked, that would be absolutely unfathomable in this day and age. No one would stand for it,” Moore continues. “Some of it is just like, what the actual fuck were people just accepting?”
Back in 2019, Moore was one of seven women who spoke to The New York Times about abuse allegations against her ex-husband and music producer Ryan Adams. When asked if she thinks the #MeToo movement has come for toxic men and held them accountable in the same way it has men in Hollywood, Moore says while she doesn’t think she has authority to speak on the matter, she also wonders if there’s still room for people to shed light on the darker side of the music industry.
“I definitely don’t think the music industry ever had a full reckoning in the way that Hollywood did. I don’t know why that is, but I feel like there are the same misdeeds and bad behavior. I’m not sure what the explanation is. Maybe it will continue to sort of trickle out,” Moore says. “But I don’t feel like I have my footing in the music world in quite the same way that I do in the acting world. I feel like acting has always kind of been my day job and music has been more of a hobby.”
With Dr. Death premiering on Peacock, Moore is eager to enter the next phase of her career and says she’s “an open sponge seeing where the world takes me.” With her youngest son Ozzie just turning one year old in October, her three-year-old son Gus entering pre-school, and her husband Taylor Goldsmith continuing to tour as a musician in the folk rock band Dawes, Moore says she’s “relishing in this really sweet and tender point in their lives.” According to the actor, it will be an interesting time for her family to continue to figure out their new dynamic and she’s looking forward to spending quality time together. That doesn’t mean, though, that she wants work to slow down.
Moore says she’s in various stages of development on a few different projects where she would serve as both producer and actor. She’s also open to other TV jobs that come her way, and a real dream of hers is to act in an awards movie.
“Whoever will have me, I’m easy. I’m ready to go,” Moore says. “I’m having so much fun watching all these movies right now. This is the best time of year when all the best movies come out. I’m like, ‘Oh, I want to do something like that,’ or, ‘I want to work with this person.’ I definitely feel fired up now that the strike’s over to figure out what’s next and dig into something juicy and challenging.”