This Is Us Creator Explains Why Kate’s Divorce Is “Not All Bad”

This Is Us may be breaking up beloved couple Kate and Toby, but don’t expect a nasty divorce.

Following the season six premiere on Jan. 4, show creator and executive producer Dan Fogelman admitted that the writers’ goal was to portray what a divorce really looks like. As he told The Hollywood Reporter, “a marriage falling apart is not all bad constantly.”

“It can get there, and certainly there are ones that are like that,” he explained. “I think Toby [Chris Sullivan] and Kate [Chrissy Metz] had come into this with a great love story, and to have them be at a 180-degree paradigm shift as we open the season, and ready to kill each other and on the cusp of divorce, wouldn’t be fair. We’re going to build it slowly.”

As for the decision to break up Kate and Toby, Fogelman said that’s life: “Marriages not always working out over time is something that happens more frequently than not.”