PublishedMay 21, 2022, 4:22pm|UpdatedMay 25, 2022, 4:32pm
Randall’s storyline as a transracial adoptee has helped others feel ‘seen’ (Pictures:Getty/NBC)
As This Is Us comes to an end, fans have their tissues ready for what is bound to be an emotional finale, after six series of moving storylines and following the ins and outs of the Pearson family.
Throughout the programme, a range of sensitive topics have been explored from eating disorders to men’s mental health, grief to racism, and, perhaps one of the most prominent of all, transracial adoption.
The beloved drama, starring Mandy Moore, Sterling K Brown and Justin Hartley, has featured narratives across generations of the Pearsons, going back and forth between years, as Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy) adopted their third triplet, the teenage children suffered from the loss of their dad, and, as adults, they navigate their own way through the world and their relationships with each other.
Following the storyline of Randall’s experience as the Black adopted son, transracial adoptees have found their own narratives to have been represented and reflected, and enabled them to explore feelings and put into words emotions that were meaningful to them.
Metro.co.uk spoke to some transracial adoptees to discover how witnessing Randall’s development throughout the series had impacted them, from viewing his sudden adoption to following him as he found his biological father and discovered the secrets he had been hidden from, to recognising the way in which the Black Lives Matter movement impacted him as he navigated growing up in a white family.
Joy Hoffman, 52, was adopted at the age of 10 months from Korea by a white family
Joy told us how Randall’s experience resonated with her (Picture: Joy Hoffman)
As a child, Randall has already realised that he’s different and it’s not about not loving his family, it’s about feeling like ‘This is a very different experience for me, I don’t have anybody who looks like me and so I’m really curious about what this may be to be playing with kids who look like me’.
I think some of the stuff that resonates with me for Randall is this concept of identity and coming into your own and realising you’re different and struggling with it, the idea that you love your family and you wonder about this other life that you might have had, you wonder about what it would be like to be around people who look like you especially when you are always surrounded by whiteness.
Joy was adopted at the age of 10 months from Korea (Picture: Joy Hoffman)
There was the episode where his mum admits to him that she’s known his biological father and you see in episodes following Rebecca’s fragility and thinking she’s going to lose Randall or wondering if Randall is still going to love her and all these things, and basically making it about her, and that’s something that adoptees see a lot – so many adoptive parents make things about them.
They only think about ‘Look what I did for you,’ they don’t think about ‘What did that entail?’ Yes, you gave me a better life and I don’t know anything about my country of origin or my language of origin, I literally lost all of that.
Those are feelings of loss of culture, of language, every time I walk into a Korean grocery store and people start speaking Korean at me, I feel really stupid, and then I get angry because ‘Why wasn’t I taught this when I was younger?’ I don’t feel Korean enough ever. That feeling of guilt that I didn’t pass this onto my kids but knowing I couldn’t, I didn’t learn it either.
Viola Helen, 25, was adopted from China at the age of 14 months by a white, single parent
Viola was adopted from China at 14-months-old by a white single mother (Picture: Viola Helen)
It’s the first show that I would say I feel seen, my story is seen, especially because it is difficult for adoptees to speak to non-adoptees about our issues that we do face.
Randall is my favourite character for obvious reasons and following his story arch, especially in the episode where he finds out about [his father leaving him at a fire station], I was in absolute tears. That was so powerful and so moving, his whole story has been done so well by This Is Us, so when I do talk about my own adoption experience I do refer to This Is Us quite a lot because I think it’s easier for non-adoptees or people who don’t know anything about adoption, especially transracial adoption as well, it’s just easier for them to understand through the show than necessarily me talking about it, and it’s easier for me to direct them to the show than to open up personally because it is a very personal and vulnerable topic.
Viola reflected on seeing Randall struggle with his identity in a white family (Picture: NBC)
When I went in university in particular a lot of people I spoke to, when I said I was adopted, their response was that ‘You’re really lucky,’ and I even get that now, and that just really irritates me because why am I lucky? I am lucky obviously but there’s so much that I’ve been through that is not lucky, and I’m very unlucky to have gone through those things, so the fact that the show was depicting his adoption struggles resonated with me a lot, because I do struggle because people completely forget about the things that we have lost as adoptees, and the identity struggles, and loads of other things.
The representation of an adopted character has meant so much. I love it. It’s one of my favourite TV shows, and as I said, it’s the first show I’ve ever felt seen in, and I’m glad that he’s raised the issues and made people aware.
Hannah, 26, was adopted at the age of 6 months from China by a white, single mother
Hannah was adopted as a 6-month-old from China (Picture: Hannah)
I think for me, what makes Randall’s character special is that they explore how he feels about his adoption — the good and the bad. And he gets to feel things and say things and just be heard. In a way, it feels almost unrealistic to have him be able to say things and just be heard.
It can be so daunting for me and other adoptees — especially transracial adoptees, I think — to share how we’re feeling: how it feels to be different from the rest of your family, to realize you never had a say in the most pivotal moment of your life, etc. For me, Randall feels authentic. He’s more than just his adoption, sure, but his adoption is such a large part of who he is, and we see the ripple effect.
In one episode, he says: ‘It has defined my life, being adopted. It’s defined my life even when I didn’t realize it was defining it. And I think part of that, at least for me, is that this big, giant thing happened to me, and I didn’t have any say in it.’ It’s so rare that an adopted character speaks like this.
Often, the adopted characters are young and adoption simply happens to them… that is, we don’t see much else. We don’t see how their adoption shapes them into an adult, how it impacts their friendships and relationships. In a lot of instances, adoption is something that happens and then is done. For me, it feels like there’s always something missing.
Like writers want to bring up adoption, but they don’t know how to talk about it. With This Is Us, we see the circumstances that led to Randall’s adoption, we see his birth parents as young adults, and we see him grow up with the Pearsons and start his own family. We see and experience all of it.
Sterling K Brown plays Randall as an adult (Picture: AP)
I think there’s an expectation in society that adoptees should feel grateful to have been adopted, and for This is Us to spin that around and show how adoption affects Randall so deeply… It’s something I think I’ll always be in awe of and appreciative of.
I hope that This Is Us has moved the needle, however slightly, towards more open and honest conversations about adoption – and hopefully these conversations centre adoptees. I would love to see more writers explore adoption in the way the This is Us writers have done with Randall Pearson.
Henry Coburn, 24, is a mixed-race adoptee who was adopted at birth by white parents
Henry was adopted at birth by white parents (Picture: Henry Coburn)
The 2020 protests were what sparked me looking for my biological parents, as I was thinking about racism and thinking about my upbringing, I started thinking about how having white parents had impacted me.
It was really hard because, this is something that really resonated with Randall for me, my parents lied to me about what information that they had, so I always thought that there was no information, but turns out there was a box full of letters and pictures and stuff like that, so those two things, finding out there’s actually information to look with and being confronted with racism is what drove me to start looking.
This Is Us centres around ‘The Big 3’ triplets: Justin Hartley as Kevin, Chrissy Metz as Kate, and Sterling K. Brown as Randall (Picture: NBC/Getty)
I think This Is Us does a really good job with Randall’s childhood, I don’t think they do the best job with his adult experience as an adoptee. Being an adult adoptee is such a complicated experience, and we’re very rarely listened to, and also, you can tell This Is Us doesn’t condemn adoption and lots of adoptees do. I don’t think they give a fair voice to people who are against adoption, which the vast majority of those who are against it are adopted.
It’s been really great and has opened the door for a lot of discussions and helped me realise things in my own experience. Watching This Is Us is when I realised that being an adopted person means you’re in a minority group, it’s not just something that happened to you. It shapes your whole experience, it’s also made lots of other people want to listen to adoptees, so it’s been really, really great.
Watching Randall’s storyline unfold has ‘opened the door’ to conversations Henry now feels able to have (Picture: NBC/Getty)
I want to say I’m glad to see how they portrayed Rebecca, even though it would have been nice to see an adoptive parent be better, I’m glad that they did it like that, because it’s accurate. The people who are centred are the adoptive parents, and it’s not necessarily their fault, because all the messaging that we’ve heard is centred around that, like adoption is a means for people to complete their family, not necessarily a means for a child to go into their home, so I like that they did that because Rebecca is a good person who loves her family, her centring herself isn’t a malicious thing, it’s just what she’s been programmed to do.
When Kevin accuses Randall of being ungrateful, that scene really resonated with me, because it’s something that gets thrown in our faces all the time as adoptees. If we complain about anything, we’re ungrateful. If I was biologically related to my parents, people wouldn’t say the same. I think about that scene constantly.
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