The second season of Shrinking, Apple TV+'s critically acclaimed and Emmy-nominated comedy-drama, has allowed its creators to go places they never dreamed of, especially with Harrison Ford.
Season two, which premieres on the streamer on Tuesday, October 16, 2024, sees Jason Segel return as Jimmy Laird, a therapist dealing with severe grief following his wife's death. Harrison Ford plays Dr. Paul Rhoades, a fellow therapist who is also a colleague of Jimmy's at the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Center. New episodes drop every week on Wednesdays until Christmas. Shrinking has, by the way, been renewed for a third season.
While the dialogue in the first season was sharp, authentic, insightful, fresh, and funny, the trust the cast and creators, Segel, Bill Lawrence, and Brett
"I think he also said that in Presumed Innocent," Segel told me with a laugh. "Maybe that was a DVD extra? Everyone was in the pool playing, and I think that was one of the really exciting things. You started to see it in season one. You could feel it around that episode when Harrison shows up stoned to the birthday party. There's something infectious about when everyone starts taking the show for a spin, and the show is all the better for it."
Lawrence adds, "We would not have written it the first year. We were all intimidated by him. The greatest thing about the first season was that we developed mutual trust. The dude is so good, he's just so good, and he'll try anything now. He might try it skeptically and ask you afterward if it worked, but that line is a great example. That line, he's like, 'Alright,' and he did it. You could tell by the reception that it was a monster, but what an honor to know that we can write, and he will try almost anything. I can't believe it's happening with this guy."
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Segel particularly enjoyed landing a line suggesting Ford's character sounded like Batman. It instantly makes you realize that Hollywood has perhaps missed a casting trick because the observation makes a valid point. Did he ever get offered that role?
"We never talked about that, but he had great fun doing that scene," Segel explains. "Harrison did variations on how close he sounded to Batman, and let me tell you, he could be Batman."
The respect and reverence Ford receives from everyone involved in Shrinking is clear and unsurprising, given his iconic catalog of work, its impact on popular culture, and the creatives at the helm of this chapter in his career. The fact he's so on board with their vision is something they still can't quite believe.
"There'll never be another Harrison Ford," Lawrence states. "There's never going to be another actor or actress because of the way the medium has changed, that was Han Solo and Indiana Jones and The Fugitive and the US President in Air Force One, and it is just bananas to me. To have that kind of trust from someone, probably one of the only actors or actresses I've worked with, that can honestly look me in the face and go, 'I've done this way more often than you have, and know even more than you do about it,' is a gift"
‘Shrinking’ Provides Relief From Grief In Surprising Ways
As well as pushing the envelope with dialogue, season two of Shrinking also explores new ground with the complexities and categories of grief. Lawrence, who has also given audiences Spin City and Scrubs, found a lot of the confidence for the team to be able to do that in the reaction to the first season but in a different way than he expected.
"Do you know what was weird? I didn't know how universal a topic, not only that therapy was in the zeitgeist, but also grief. I don't want to say it was demoralizing, but the feedback we got from fans and people responding to the show was that, unfortunately, everybody is at most two steps removed from some massive grief event, whether it's a parent slowly disappearing on you, family strife or maybe a kid who is struggling," he explains. "It was a sad way to find out that was such a universal topic, but people were open to the idea of laughing your way through it."
"We try to be very comedy forward, but I would be remiss if I didn't say the real reason we get such liberties is because Apple, and I don't say this shit a lot so it's real, are a great partner. They're super supportive of me, our company, our shows, and they are so trusting that it's a real gift of a relationship for me to have at this point in my career." Apple TV+ is also the home of two other shows Lawrence has spearheaded, Ted Lasso and Bad Monkey.
That said, Segel couldn't be more proud of how that manifested in the evolution of Shrinking and its cast of characters in season two.
"Season one was very focused and directed from darkness into light, like, 'Get somebody out of immediate danger.' There was someone in a hole, and we had to get them out of there. This season, you deal with asking, 'Now what? What happens when you have to deal with life?' That is much more about the community that you're a part of," he muses. "There's this thing that David Foster Wallace said about depression, and I'm paraphrasing, that depression is such an overwhelming feeling that it gives you the inability to empathize with other people's issues. I think that now Jimmy is out of this intense hole, he can see that he is surrounded by people who are also going through all of their own stuff, and we get to explore that like; finally, he's a little bit less self-centered."
Elsewhere, Ford's character's evolution also involves coping with Parkinson's disease, aging, and the grief of losing parts of ourselves we perhaps took for granted as we moved through life. The actor is 82 years old, so doing that required willingness and, again, trust to bring sensitivity but not ignore reality.
"It's an honor and the biggest thing in my career to be involved in this stage of Harrison Ford's career. I love it, and he's so passionate. I find him inspiring because he's always grinding. He goes from job to job to job," Lawrence says. "Your observation is so astute because I think Paul's story of a man who loves his profession dealing with the profound impact of realizing that he might not be able to do it forever, there's no way that Harrison's not internalizing that and incorporating whatever you know he's thinking about in his own life. For us to be writing about that and then watching him leave our show and go to a Marvel movie, leave the Marvel movie, and go to 1923 and suck it all in gives me such hope and optimism for the exact stuff you're talking about with moving forward. But yes, this is about dealing with loss on a bigger level than just maybe, 'Oh, that person passed.'"
Brett Goldstein Is ‘Genius’ In ‘Shrinking’
Shrinking's second season also sees one of the show's co-creators, Brett Goldstein, finally join the cast in a narratively critical guest star role. His character is the polar opposite of his Roy Kent persona in Ted Lasso.
"I was so impressed by Brett Goldstein," Lawrence enthuses. "He was a longtime friend of mine before Ted Lasso. We had worked together on a pilot that I made, that he starred in, and it was garbage. That was my fault. He was against type in Ted Lasso, which was brilliant because, in real life, he's such a sweet, empathetic, sympathetic man with this inherent kindness."
"I don't think this character would have worked if we cast the wrong guy who is intrinsically a villain. It only works if it's somebody that, in light of what he has done, you're like, 'I still hope it works out for him,' because then people are not going to know if it is or if it is not. It makes the thing all the more poignant, I hope."
At the end of the second season's first episode, Segel and Goldstein's characters engage in a pivotal and powerful incendiary interaction that alone could possibly secure the British actor another Emmy nomination. It's a lightning-in-a-bottle moment.
"Brett is astounding in the show, and all the recognition he's going to get for this part is really well deserved. He's a genius," Segel proclaims.
Lawrence adds, "Here's what's really interesting. What Jason did was not on the page. We knew there was a conflict there, but one of the best things about having Jason as a partner and a creator is that we didn't know he was going to yell. We didn't know how much that would set him off, but it genuinely set the tone for the whole year. I don't like to be too precious about it, but it was definitely one of those shiver moments for all of us on set that we felt like, 'Oh, this is going to work,' but it was hard to watch.'"
While it was "a really intense scene to shoot," Segel giggles as he concludes our chat with a recollection of how they cut the tension afterward. "I remember being very embarrassed," he says with a giggle. "We did the first take, and then I just heard him off camera say, 'I think I need a new shirt.' He walked up, and I had covered him in spit because I was yelling at him so hard, but it was raw. It's a raw scene."