THIS IS US: By now most Bradfordians have heard of the prominent part Bradford will be playing in the hit NBC television show “This Is Us.”

On Thursday, RTS caught up with the executive producer of the show, Isaac Aptaker, to talk to him about what has the town buzzing.

“This is so great! We didn’t expect this,” Isaac said, when told of the excitement in the area in reaction to the “Bradford sighting.”

He added, “We love how excited people are.”

Near the end of Tuesday’s midseason finale on the show, it is learned that Nick Pearson, thought to have died in Vietnam, is actually alive and living in Bradford, Pa. — on Songbird Road, according to a piece of mail shown on screen.

“My mom and her whole family grew up” in Bradford, Isaac said.

“When we were trying to figure out where to place Nicky, in Pennsylvania but not too far from Pittsburgh, I said, ‘I actually have been to this little town. It’s nice and quiet.’”

As for Songbird Road, he hadn’t been there — but he loved the way it sounded.

“We honestly picked it because we really loved the lyrical quality of the street name,” Isaac said. “We’re writers. It was whatever we found charming. We liked how pretty the name was.”

Isaac gave us a little of his family background, too.

His mother, Sherry Reisner, is a graduate of Bradford Area High School. His grandfather owned and operated Reisner Auto Parts in Bradford for many years on North Kendall Avenue.

“He moved there from Europe and opened the store,” Isaac said of his grandfather.

He remembers with fondness his trip to Bradford in the 1990s, when he was about 12 years old.

“We went to Zippo,” he said. “We went on the tour of the factory. I thought it was the coolest thing. … My mom told me I could get a lighter. I was so excited.”

He remembers stopping at the parts store, and visiting a place in the upstairs of the building where his mother and aunts and uncles had left their names or handprints in wet concrete years before.

“That was the coolest part of the trip,” Isaac said. “That was really cool for my mom, and for me as a kid.

“It was still there in the late 90s,” he added. He’d love to see a picture of it, if it still remains, he added.

“We went by my mom’s old house. We didn’t go in,” he added. “I’d heard so many stories of her childhood. It was great.”

Isaac grew up just outside of Boston, went to college in New York and moved to Los Angeles 10 years ago.

Sadly, he said there’s no plan to film any part of the show in Bradford.

“We do almost all of that in LA,” he said. “For us to film on the East Coast would be prohibitively expensive. Unfortunately, we will not be coming to Bradford.”

And while he certainly appreciates a Zippo lighter, it was not his Bradford connection that landed one on the show.

“It was our props guy who decided it,” Isaac explained. “Those guys do so much research. I had nothing to do with it. We have so many amazing people who work on this show.”

With the show’s family living in Pittsburgh, the writers try to “pepper in as many references as possible for Pennsylvania folks,” Isaac said. “One of our writers is from Pennsylvania. He grew up in Hershey.

“My mom and my dad’s sides of the family are all from Pennsylvania,” he added.

He had a message to send to the show’s fans as well.

“Thank you so much for supporting the show. We try to support a message of bringing people together. We try to spread that message that we are more the same than we are different.”

Isaac said if people are gathering together in front of the television to watch a show about people gathering together and supporting each other, “then we’ve done our job.”

He encourages fan mail to the show as well. When we mentioned we’d heard from people sharing memories of his family, Isaac was quite touched.

Fanmail may be sent to: 5555 Melrose Ave., Marx Bldg 207, Los Angeles CA 90038