Shrinking creator on Harrison Ford’s hilarious reaction to Jason Segel

Bill Lawrence speaks exclusively with RadioTimes.com about the new Apple TV+ series.

By James Hibbs

Published: Friday, 27 January 2023 at 12:00 am

New Apple TV+ comedy drama series Shrinking stars Jason Segel as a therapist grieving the death of his wife, who one day starts to go rogue and tell his patients exactly what he really thinks.

Along with Segel the series has been created by Ted Lasso co-writers Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein (who also plays Roy Kent in that show), and co-stars Harrison Ford in a major casting coup.

RadioTimes.com spoke exclusively with Lawrence ahead of the show’s debut to ask how this casting came about. He explained: “I’d known Harrison a little bit and Brett ran into him in London.

“And when we were talking about the character, we said ‘a Harrison Ford type’ because it’s supposed to be an older guy, tail end of his career, blue collar, gruff but funny.

“I just told Brett, ‘Dude, I’ll just ask him. He’ll say no and then we’ll move on.’ And I asked him and he was like, ‘Ah, I might do it.’ And I didn’t have anything else ready after that.

“So we sent Jason Segel in and Harrison… I’m not sure I should say this but I’m like, ‘And it’s with Jason Segel’ and Harrison Ford was like, ‘Who’s that?’”

""
Harrison Ford and Jason Segel in Shrinking.
Apple TV+

Lawrence revealed that he and the team then sent Ford copies of Segel’s films The End of the Tour and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and that Ford responded: “I love this guy, I don’t know why I hadn’t heard of him – I love him.”

Lawrence continued: “Then he said, ‘Also he’s got a great penis!’ Because Jason was nude full frontal in Sarah Marshall. And so Jason framed that text and put it on his wall at his place. Like, ‘Harrison Ford texted me about my naked body!’”

Meanwhile, Brett Goldstein also spoke with RadioTimes.com about his meeting with Ford ahead of him officially coming on board the series.

Goldstein said: “I met with him and we had a chat and he said he wanted to do it. We talked all night and he was like, ‘I relate to a lot of this. There are aspects of the character…’ certainly stuff I won’t spoil that happens later in this series, but it really spoke to him, I think.

“And also, aside from the seriousness of the character, which I think he really understood, he hadn’t officially done comedy really – and he’s f**king funny. And I think he was buzzing to do things where he’s getting laughs, like you could see him in the read-through getting huge laughs in the room and the sort of delight in his eyes like, ‘Oh, this is fun, comedy’s fun.’

“So I’m assuming that’s why he did it but we still can’t really believe it. When we’re in the edit and we’re looking at it, occasionally I’m sort of like, ‘Is that Harrison Ford in this show, how the f**k has this happened?’”

Shrinking arrives ahead of the third and final season of Ted Lasso, which has been a major hit for Apple since its debut.

In spite of its popularity and success, fans last year voted to say it was right for the show to end with its upcoming season, finishing out the story as the creators intended.