'This Is Us' Adds Jane Kaczmarek as Guest Star

This Is Us has added Malcolm in the Middle star Jane Kaczmarek to its roster of guest stars for the upcoming third season.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Kaczmarek will be playing a "liberal university professor and scientist" who is "intelligent, warm, and down-to-earth."

She's not the first iconic TV-mom to appear in the show as Married … with Children's Katey Sagal guest starred in season one of This is Us and That '70s Show's Debra Jo Rupp turned up in season 2.

In addition to Kaczmarek, season three of the NBC drama series will also feature guest star appearances by Gerald McRaney, Brad Garrett, Denis O'Hare, Ron Howard, and Elizabeth Perkins.

This is Us creator Dan Fogelman recently spoke to Deadline about the series, and addressed what he and the producers have in store for the new season.

"We have a lot going on," he revealed. "I think what's cool about this season and what potentially makes it our biggest in scope thus far is that everybody is kind of getting a new 'plotline.' The goal of the end of season two was to wrap some things up and start some new chapters. [Season 3] is continuous from where we left them, but they're starting new chapters."

He also explained that going forward a lot of the show would dive "heavily" into the time that Pearson family patriarch Jack spent in Vietnam.

"One of my writing heroes, Tim O'Brien, who wrote The Things They Carried and many other novels, I just finished actually writing an episode with him that's an entire Vietnam Jack backstory episode, early in our season," Fogelman shared. "That's going to be really incredibly exciting and unusual."

The creator also opened up about how the new season will begin to further explore the relationship between Rebecca (Mandy Moore) and Miguel (Jon Huertas).

"When we're picking up that particular storyline, [with] the teenage kids, we're picking it up pretty immediately a couple of months after their father's death," Fogelman said. "You're seeing the beginning of a storyline where Miguel starts trying to help this family along, this character who has always been polarizing."

"I think last season, people actually started to love him, and then started to hate themselves for loving him," he then added. "But then, they gradually figured out that this guy really has done nothing untoward and is a guy trying to do the right thing."

"We're going to dive deeper into that this season and begin this long play of making people actually start rooting for Miguel in a serious way," Fogelman went on to say, "which I think will be really exciting when we pull it off."

This is Us season 3 premieres on Tuesday, Sept. 25.