'This Is Us' Star Chrissy Metz Says Her Relationship With Her Dad Is Strained

On the NBC hit “This Is Us,” Chrissy Metz has an amazing bond with her TV dad, played by Milo Ventimiglia.

In real life, though, Metz’s relationship with her father is far from perfect. While speaking to ET’s Kevin Frazier earlier this week, the 36-year-old actress said her dad hasn’t been a part of her life since she was 8, though he’s recently reached out.

“When my parents got divorced, we didn’t have a relationship and there was a lot of resentment, if I’m honest,” she told Fraizer. “Now, he comes on the scene and he’s like, ‘Oh, congratulations!’ And my mom is kind of like, ‘Oh, now he wants to show up?’”

That said, Metz said she’s trying to give a second chance to her dad, who was in the Navy during her youth.

“We never know people’s full [stories] and I don’t obviously know everything that he was going through,” Metz said. “And now, while I don’t have a relationship with him, as a human being, I have empathy for him because there’s a reason why he did what he did.”

Her rocky relationship isn’t the only hardship Metz has opened up about recently. Earlier this month, the actress told Glamour magazine that before she landed the role of Kate, she was flat-out broke.

“When I booked ‘This Is Us,’ I had 81 cents in my bank account,” she said. “I could cry right now just thinking about it.”

Getting the role of Kate “changed everything.”

Now when women come up to Metz and tell her how her portrayal of Kate has changed their lives, it “makes all the struggle, all the ramen noodles, all the times when I couldn’t pay my bills, all the times where I was like, ‘I can’t do this,’ worth it.”

So worth it.

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