Brett Goldstein, who co-created Shrinking alongside Jason Segel and Bill Lawrence, is headed to the screen this season, thanks to the urging of Segel.
Season two of the Apple TV+ comedy — following grieving therapist Jimmy (Segel) as he breaks the rules and tells his clients exactly what he thinks — sees Goldstein joining the cast in a surprisingly dark role; Lawrence admitted he initially shot down the Ted Lasso star for the part, until Segel changed his mind.
“I made a mistake that I think audience members make sometimes when you equate somebody to a part they played. This needed to be an empathetic, sweetheart of a guy and in my head I’m like, ‘No, Brett’s more like [Ted Lasso character] Roy Kent.’ And then I’m like, ‘What am I talking about? He’s such a sweetie and he’s so lovely as a person,’” Lawrence told The Hollywood Reporter at the show’s L.A. premiere on Tuesday. “Jason Segel really rallied and was like, ‘What are you doing man? We should just have Brett play this part.’ I’m not going to spoil it but the show would only work if you end up rooting for this guy, and I think he kills it.”
Segel explained of going to bat for Goldstein, “I knew, secretly, that he wanted to play that part and I knew he would kill it. I have a lot of experience being Marshall Eriksen [in How I Met Your Mother] and then working to have people see me as other characters; I know he probably deals with that as Roy Kent, so I just wanted to be the voice to say no, do something totally different, let’s break that now. And he’s amazing in the show.”
Lawrence joked that another benefit of casting Goldstein was making him be clean-shaven for the role, teasing, “There’s very few things that were dealbreakers to me but I wanted him to shave the beard, not really for the character as much as for how I knew it would make him slightly miserable.”
Last season also saw the reveal that Harrison Ford‘s character is battling Parkinson’s disease, something that will be explored further this year.
Segel said they approached Ford’s storyline the “same way we approach all of the kind of tough subjects on the show, just with humor,” as Lawrence explained the personal connection, with his grandfather and Goldstein’s father both diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and the writer having begun his career on Spin City with Michael J. Fox.
“It’s really important to us to kind of represent it in an authentic way and honor it and I think Harrison’s just absolutely crushing,” Lawrence emphasized. “It really makes me proud to watch what he’s doing.”
He also noted the “pushback” they got over the first season, with “people going, ‘A real therapist would never do what Jimmy’s doing, there would be consequences.’ We’re like, ‘No duh, that’s what the finale is going to be about!’” Lawrence added, though, “the therapy community has been kind and really embraced us because they know it’s a fictional story and I think at its core, I think every therapist character is out there trying to be of service and trying to help people. I think they’re vibing on that.”
Shrinking season two, which also stars Jessica Williams, Christa Miller, Luke Tennie and Lukita Maxwell, starts streaming Oct. 16 on Apple TV+.
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