According to TVLine, Milo Ventimiglia (, known for his portrayal of Jack Pearson on This Is Us, faced an eerie parallel to his on-screen role when he and his wife, Jarah Mariano, lost their Malibu home to the fast-moving wildfires ravaging Los Angeles. In the series, Jack famously lost the family home to a fire and Ventimiglia acknowledges the unsettling resemblance between fiction and reality.
Ventimiglia and Mariano, who is pregnant and expecting their first child “any day now,” managed to grab as much as they could before evacuating. However, they were unable to save their baby’s crib and nursery items, which were destroyed in the fire.
In an interview with CBS News, Ventimiglia revealed that he and Mariano evacuated their home on Tuesday. Through their security cameras, they watched in disbelief as “flames took over” and reduced their house to ash. “There is a shock moment where you go, ‘This is real and this is happening,’ and then at a certain point you turn [the camera feed] off,” Ventimiglia shared. “What good is it to keep watching? We kind of accepted the loss.”
Reflecting on the striking similarities to the This Is Us fire that consumed the Pearson family home, Ventimiglia noted, “It’s not lost on me, life imitating art” — although his real-life tragedy stemmed from a wildfire, not a slow cooker. Unlike Jack, who perished in the fire, Ventimiglia and his family were able to evacuate safely. “Wife and baby and dog, most important,” he emphasized.
Looking ahead, Ventimiglia remains optimistic. “We’ve got good friends and we’ve got good people we’re working with, and we’ll make do. We’ll make do,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mandy Moore, Ventimiglia’s on-screen wife on This Is Us, also experienced devastation from the wildfires. Moore’s Altadena, California, home, which she shares with husband Taylor Goldsmith and their three children, remains “mostly intact but not livable” after her family evacuated on Tuesday evening.