Who Plays Little Jack On This Is Us?
NBC's twist-filled "This is Us" has been an audience and critical success since its debut in 2016, with a 94% Tomatometer rating and an 8.7 IMDb audience score for its 100-plus episodes. The emotional and uplifting drama also has been an Emmy favorite, racking up 38 nominations and four wins (via Emmys).
The story of the Pearson family is in its 6th season, starring Milo Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore as Jack and Rebecca Pearson, and Sterling K. Brown, Chrissy Metz, and Justin Hartley as their children Randall, Kate, and Kevin. While the show often flashes back to the 1980s when Jack and Rebecca were a young couple, it mostly takes place in the present, and focuses on the three Pearson children and the families they start as adults.
Kate falls in love with a man named Toby Damon (Chris Sullivan), but their relationship is fraught with physical and mental health challenges, and flashes to the future throughout the series prove that their marriage will not survive. After a variety of pregnancy-related complications, Kate and Toby add a son, Jack, to their family in Season 3, but he is born three months ahead of schedule with severe retinopathy of prematurity — visual impairment directly caused by his early arrival (via National Eye Institute).
Until the episode "Saturday in the Park," young Jack appears as either an infant or in flash-forward scenes. But in introducing us to the character as a toddler, who did NBC bring in to play this important role?
Baby Jack is played by 3-year-old actor Johnny Kincaid
The young actor called on to play the toddler version of Jack Pearson is three-year-old Johnny Kincaid (via IMDb). His mother Marisol posted to Instagram about his acting debut, explaining that while his condition, albinism, is "a different visual impairment, we are SO thrilled for the representation and inclusion of the blind and low vision community in a television show that does so well at showing all the nuances of life with SUCH a huge reach!"
Kincaid is adorable and captivating in an early-episode scene with Mandy Moore as Rebecca Pearson, where she tasks Jack with picking out his own shoes and he tells her he knows Kate and Toby Damon aren't getting along. Later that day, the toddler wanders away from his stressed, bickering, and distracted parents and falls on the sidewalk, cutting his forehead and leading to an intense front yard argument between them. The young actor also appears in one more scene in the episode, where Rebecca takes him to a hospital to have his wound sewn up.
We'll almost definitely be seeing more of Kincaid in the show's final episodes, and the youngster should have more work coming his way when "This is Us" concludes on May 24.