Chrissy Metz Reveals Her Boyfriend Offered to Quit This Is Us So They Could Date

Chrissy Metz isn’t afraid to make her voice heard, either when it comes to embracing her curves or finding love.

Though the This Is Us star has long maintained that she does’t need a man, when she spotted future boyfriend Josh Stancil on the set of the NBC hit, she didn’t shy away either.

One day while she was filming, Stancil — a cameraman on the show — was eating his lunch between set-ups, and she tells Marie Claire: “I was like, ‘Oh he’s cute,’ with shorts and his backward hat, kind of masculine.”

She continues, “Before I even know it, I called out, ‘You better slow down or you’re going to choke on your food.’ I am typically a little more charismatic than that, I swear.”

The couple went out for a drinks date a month later, which the 36-year-old actress admits was “very unexpected. My priority was my job and I was not trying to blow my big shot. Josh even offered to go work on another show.”

Metz — who is a champion of body positivity after struggling with diets and depression for decades — also notes that she is the first plus-size woman Stancil, 40, has dated but that her size was a non-conversation from the start. “I’m like, ‘Is this weird?’ He’s like, ‘No,’ ” she recalls. “And that’s the end.”

Playing Kate Pearson on This Is Us has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Metz to inspire other people struggling with self-acceptance. And she knew a fully realized portrayal of a plus-size woman, including love, sex and self-doubt, might not come along again when she went into her audition — which was all the more heartbreaking in those first few moments after she read for the part and thought she’d blown it.

She tells Marie Claire she had even picked up the phone to call her agent and break the bad news when she received a call from series creator Dan Fogelman and several producers. “They said, ‘We just wanted to tell you you’re our girl,’ ” she recalls.

“I said, ‘I’m gonna pee my pants!’ ” she shares. “They laughed, and I said, ‘You’ve hired a classy broad.’ ”

This Is Us airs Tuesdays (9 p.m. ET) on NBC.

This article originally appeared on People.com