‘Shrinking’ Finds The Funny, Even Amid The Sad Parts

Real life is both sad and funny, says the creative team behind a new series that reflects this truism.

Shrinking is a ten-episode comedy that follows a grieving therapist who starts to break the rules, telling his clients exactly what he thinks. Ignoring his training and ethics, he finds himself making huge, tumultuous changes to people’s lives, including his own.

The series stars Jason Segel, who also is a co-creator and executive producer, as well as Harrison Ford, Jessica Williams, Lukita Maxwell, Luke Tennie, Michael Urie, and Christa Miller.

Segal plays the therapist looking to rebuild his life with Ford acting as his mentor.

Co-creator Bill Lawrence says when mapping out the narrative, he and his fellow co-creator Brett Goldstein felt that they, “wanted to write a show about grief because right now the world’s a little bit of a dumpster fire and you can’t meet anybody that isn’t at least two or three degrees separated from some sad shit going on in their life.”

Goldstein, who also plays Roy Kent on Ted Lasso and is a writer on that series as well, adds, “People keep asking us about the tone, like, “How can you make something that’s so funny when it’s so sad?” And I’m always like, “Isn’t that life? Isn’t that daily existence?’ It feels sort of instinctual to us.”

He say that in terms of balancing the tone of Shrinking, “it’s something you’re doing in the script, then it’s something you’re doing on set with performances, then it’s something you’re doing in the edit. And it’s always finding the right balance of it’s too funny, if it’s too silly, you’ll stop taking it seriously. And if it’s too sad, you’ll stop laughing. So, we are constantly toying with the right balance of it.”

Segal has an interesting take, saying, “Rock bottom is an interesting thing because it seems like it’s a sad place, but it’s actually very hopeful because there’s no place to go but up. And then watching people scramble in the dark to try to pull themselves out of a hole I think is an inherently-funny thing. Grown-ups desperate is really funny.”

When it comes to analysis in his own life, Segal admits, “I like therapy a lot. For years I had an ex-girlfriend who kept saying, ‘You should go to therapy,’ and all I heard in my head was like she was criticizing me. Then I went to therapy and I was like, oh, she loved me. She just wants me to be happy. I think that that’s one of the cool things about the show is it explores how therapists can really help you get out of a rut.”

In handling the extreme swing of emotions in the series, Segal says, “Well, I’m really lucky that I don’t really have a strong sense of pride or shame.”

He laughs a little as he points out, “I think the best I was able to kind of express vulnerability was literally in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, [with my doing] full-frontal nudity [in the film].”

Then adds, “There are moments in this show that are the same level of vulnerability but a more mature version, which is emotional vulnerability — like what does it look like if someone is really grieving something that they’re never going to get back.”

Casting and finding just the right people for the creative roles for the series was key, explains Lawrence, saying, “we [needed] to get actors and actresses and writers that could make stuff authentic so that people can kind of veer from moments of big emotional drama into hopefully moments that are silly and fun.”

This is where Harrison Ford comes in, with Lawrence talking about working with him, saying, “You get these rare opportunities in your career. I started when I was 25, writing a show for Michael J. Fox, who turned out to be just as you would hope he would be, as a kind, and lovely, and hyper-talented, and a dude you still want to be in connection with even after work ends. And to now be at this point in my career, getting to repeat that experience with an icon who is equally generous, and awesome, and kind to everybody — it’s an absolute treat.“

After agreeing with Lawrence about working with Ford, Segel offers his take on what is really at the core of Shrinking, saying that the narrative is about, “getting really honest about what life actually feels like when nobody’s looking.”

‘Shrinking’ premieres Friday, January 27^th on Apple TV+