Chrissy Metz invited a “test market” to listen to her Prayed For This Day album ahead of its release, but her former This Is Us costar Mandy Moore was not included in that group.
“I am so insular. I think everybody is about their art,” Metz, 43, exclusively told Us Weekly on Wednesday, October 11, of why she didn’t want her friends to hear an early cut of the songs. “You’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to.’ My family, I feel like they’ll be honest, and I don’t want my friends to be like, ‘Well, I have to say this or that.’ Not to say that they would or she would, but I’m just very protective of it.”
She continued: “My family would be honest that I could handle it. I don’t know about the truth from my friends. I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s too painful!’”
Metz released the children’s album in February, which is her first full-length album. Metz’s This Is Us TV mom, Moore, initially rose to fame as a pop star in the early 2000s. Despite Moore, 39, being an accomplished singer in her own right, Metz was wary to ask for music tips.
“I think music in particular is a little more vulnerable because it’s me. It’s not Chrissy as another character. It’s ‘Oh, here’s my heart and my soul,’ and I’m going to be literally sharing that on a microphone,” she told Us. “There’s nowhere to hide. I mean, you’re just so exposed. I think aside from stand-up comedy, I think that’s most vulnerable [thing].”
While Metz did not want Moore or any of her other friends to listen to an early version of Prayed For This Day, she gushed over the special relationship she has with her This Is Us castmates.
“I think there was just this time and space of everybody at this point in their lives and their ages and their careers, and I mean, from Sterling [K. Brown] to every single person on the cast to [creator] Dan [Fogelman], to the crew, it was, like, lightning in a bottle,” she told Us. “And you can’t even plan that. You could dream of it, but I just think it was the right people, the right place, the right time, what the world needed, what we as the people making the show needed.”
Metz added: “We’re still friends and we constantly are in contact or hanging out, and you really form a bond. It was honest and true, and because the show was honest and true, we can then be that way with each other. Yeah, so it’s a whole thing.”
Since the show wrapped, Metz collaborated with ex-boyfriend Bradley Collins, who announced their split earlier this month, on their joint book When I Talk to God, I Talk About You and LP Prayed For This Day. The duo — along with Phil Barton, Liz Rose and Jen Wayne — wrote 10 songs in less than one week before Metz went into the recording studio.
“We were pressed for time … and it just all sort of fell out,” Metz said. “We took a lot of the through lines [from our] book about learning to be brave and that you’re loved no matter what, and about making friends. I think the foundation was there, but I did not expect to have written 10 songs and recorded them within 30 days.”
Metz, who recently performed several of the lullabies at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, put her whole heart into the original tracks.
“One of the songs, ‘No Matter What,’ is really special to me, and it’s still one of my favorites because … I think ultimately, even as adults, all we want is to be loved no matter what, no matter the choices we make, good or bad, indifferent, or who we want to become, what career path, and that we want to be unconditionally loved by our caretakers, our parents, our family,” Metz said on Wednesday. “So that one in particular always gets me a little emotional when I listen to it because I think ultimately that’s all we want, full stop, is to be loved.”
Prayed For This Day is currently eligible to be nominated for Best Children’s Album at next year’s Grammy Awards. “I mean, we would love to get a Grammy nomination and I think that the children’s album category is so special, and it’s relatively small comparative to other categories,” she said. “But, the music is so important. I know this sounds cheesy, but children really are the future and you want to leave an imprint. And we, specifically in our album, want to bolster confidence. So yeah, we’ll see. Fingers, toes, eyes crossed [and] all that!”
The actress will next perform her songs during a live performance at the Grammy Museum on November 18. Then, she hits the road with Jim Brickman on a leg of his A Joyful Christmas tour.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
