Griffin Dunne's personal experience with the Vietnam Draft helped with his This Is Us role

Variety

Dunne explains how he got into his mindset for Tuesday's episode: "I got a draft card when I turned 18 just like everybody else on June 8th would have gotten. I have to do the math what year it was, but I got the card and the number was pretty low. I took that to mean I had a pretty high chance of being drafted. But within a month they ended the draft system and ended up pulling troops out of Vietnam. But in an alternate life I’ve often thought what my life would be like if I was drafted. I found that war, growing up with it and watching it on television, just terrifying. In the jungle, and booby traps and snipers and the monsoons — it looked like I was never going to live through that. So Vietnam since has always held a fascination for me. I just imagined what could have been, which, thank God, was not."