Pop-Culturalist.com

Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel, Christa Miller, Jessica Williams, Lukita Maxwell, and Michael Urie are the cast and creators behind the must-see new series, Shrinking.

The dramedy follows a grieving therapist (played by Segel) who starts to break the rules and tell 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.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to chat with Bill, Jason, Christa, Jessica, Lukita, and Michael about Shrinking Season 1.

PC: Tell us about Shrinking and the inspiration behind the series.
Bill: I personally like writing about emotional stories of depth and laughing your way through them. Brett [Goldstein], Jason, and I wanted to do a show about finding your way through grief by seeing if you can help others and yourself and do it comedically. We live in a world right now that’s been a big old dumpster fire. This feels authentic and real enough to people that Apple was nice enough to let us take a shot with it.

PC: Shrinking centers around a grieving therapist who ignores his ethics and training but ultimately changes the lives of those around him. Who were the people in your own life who shaped the storyteller that you are today?
Bill: I’m always worried because, comedically, I’ve been doing this long enough that sometimes people will go, “All your shows are the same.” It’s me being self-conscious. It’s a great question because all of my shows have a throughline of mentorship. I care about it not only in front of the camera and how it’s portrayed in stories but behind the camera with actors and other writers as well. I was mentored into this business. There are so many crappy stories about Hollywood, justifiably so, but almost everybody that got a break was mentored by somebody.

Mine was a guy named Gary Goldberg. He passed away. He created Family Ties and Brooklyn Bridge. He was awesome. He was one. I was also a fu*k-up in high school. I would go get drunk at Peach Lake in my free periods. I had an English teacher who said, “Hey, instead of being an idiot, why don’t you come talk to me about TV, movies, and writing? You seem to love it.” He convinced me. I didn’t know anybody in Hollywood. I was good at writing dialogue. His name was Bob Cox. I named Dr. Cox in Scrubs after him.

Michael: Oh, wow. That’s a great question. My teachers, especially as an actor going to drama school. It was my teachers who really called out my bad habits and crutches. I think about the times when I got busted for resting on my laurels or when I played the fool, pretending I didn’t know something that I did. It has to be my teachers. Not only in drama school. I had teachers in high school who were really important to me in that way.

I also have an older sister who is a mental health professional. Even before she became certified, she was the type of person who would meet a stranger and within ten minutes they would be crying and telling their life story. I was very lucky to have both teachers in the arts and an older sister who shaped me and made me become an emotional and critical thinker.

Christa: I have a great psychiatrist. I have so many close friends that inspire me. They’re there for me and make me laugh. They’re friends who are better moms than I am, and they teach me how to do it as properly as they can. I really have lovely friends that I can call up and they’ll know.

Lukita: My mom and my dad. My dad’s an artist. I was very much influenced by his love for the arts. My mother is an incredibly strong woman who I look up to and channel into all of my characters.

PC: Jason and Bill, you’re working with such a star-studded cast. How did their performances and the trust that you instilled in them shape the story that unfolds in Season 1?
Bill: There’s no right answer to this. Some writers are married to the words. I love theater. If you were an actor in a Shakespeare play and you’re like, “I’m going to change this line,” the director would be like, “You’re fired. Get out.” But what I like about TV is when you write the pilot, the characters belong 50% to the writers and 50% to the actors and actresses. Once the show evolves, the actors and actresses have to take ownership of those parts.

It happened very quickly on this show. Watching Jessica Williams, if I tried to write Gabby the way she’s performing Gabby, it would be so inauthentic. She’s a super funny, dynamic, young Black woman. I’m an old, pasty White guy. But because her voice is so specific, it hasn’t changed the storytelling as much as it’s changed who the characters are comedically. For every cast member to say “I’m not sure I would say this like this” has been a huge cheat code for the writing staff. It’s awesome.

Jason: My belief since I was very young, especially with the way that I was mentored, is that you cast people who you think are the best and you trust that. Most of your work for a character should be done in the casting process. It’s your job as a writer or facilitator to create the space that allows them to thrive. That’s really what I believe. I think as an actor it’s really fun to adapt and play a character, but if you know how you’re going to be the funniest or the best, help me figure that out with you. Let me create the safest space for you to kill it.

PC: Jason, how did you get into your character’s mindset?
Jason: I’m sad a lot of the time. [laughs] No, I’ve never worn life very lightly. It’s worked out great for me because it’s made me want to write and express things that make me feel like I’m not alone. I don’t seem to have a lot of armor mechanisms that other people have developed where they don’t have to deal with things. I don’t have the energy to hide all that much. When I write something, I write from a place that starts with this belief that we’re all having a hard time figuring out what the point of any of this is. Maybe there’s some fun in figuring it out together.

PC: Jessica, there’s such a fun dynamic between Gabby, Jimmy, and Phil. How did you, Jason, and Harrison [Ford] bring that office dynamic to life?
Jessica: It was cool. Because it’s a new show, we got to figure out how we wanted to shape and mold the series. Bill Lawrence told me at the table read that my role is to safeguard Gabby and make sure that I’m speaking for her and advocating for her as a character. That was the only thing that I could look out for. So in working with Harrison and Jason, I wanted to make sure that I had really developed her in my mind so I wasn’t swayed by how talented and how well-developed their characters are. I needed her to come in and be just as strong as them. I knew my true north. It was really fun working with them.

Harrison has been doing this for a really long time. It was a joy to watch him work. He’s one of the greatest ever to do it. We would do each scene fifteen or twenty times. Harrison would always have a few takes where I was like, “Holy sh*t. I’m looking at a movie star.” It’s all the magic and aura he has and that glimmer in his eye, that twinkle that Indiana Jones has. It was really cool to be able to see that in real life.

Then with Jason, when I met him it felt like we had known each other for a while. It was so easy to improvise with him. There was nothing that I could give him that would be too weird. There was nothing that he could give me that would be too weird. The scenes would develop, and we would see what they’d become. That was really fun and collaborative. It helped all three of us figure out what the dynamic between our characters was going to be. It’s been a really rewarding and fulfilling job for me.

PC: Christa, Liz has such an interesting and fun dynamic with Jimmy (Jason Segal). What was it like getting to collaborate with Jason and bring that to life?
Christa: That was the most fun. We were also blessed because the first two weeks they were building our sets. The sets weren’t built. So we were shooting in actual houses in Pasadena. It was raining, so we had a lot of breaks. A lot of the writers and the cast were all in this living room. It felt like being in theater camp. We had two weeks of getting to know each other and teasing each other. We formed a bond very quickly with everyone.

PC: Michael, your character’s optimism becomes the reason why he and Jimmy have lost touch. Without giving any spoilers, what can you tease about their arc in Season 1 and the complexities of their relationship?
Michael: They’ve got fences to mend. Jimmy’s wife dies before we meet everybody. Brian, this eternal optimist, of course, wants to help him. But Jimmy needs to hit rock bottom. Jimmy needs to go dark after the death of his wife. So Jimmy ghosts Brian. It’s very painful for Brian and confusing. When we meet Brian, he’s like, “Whoa, what happened?” Jimmy doesn’t really want to go there first. Their story is about putting their lives and friendship back together and how that will look and what that means to this new Jimmy.

PC: Lukita, I love the relationship between Alice and her father and how they both learn to come to terms with their grief. What was it like getting to collaborate with Jason and bring that to life?
Lukita: It was magical. I felt so supported the whole time. He’s so kind and giving with his time and energy. He was rooting for me the whole time. I felt that support from day one. From our first table read, I knew that I would be in very good hands. I knew that I would have a wonderful scene partner to work with and learn from.

PC: Lukita, this is your biggest role to date. Did anything surprise you about the experience? Is there a scene or episode that you’re really excited for your fans to see?
Lukita: I’m really excited for Episode 6. That is when everybody comes together. We shot in the house for a week or two. There’s a lot of energy in the room, and it’s really fun.

PC: Jessica, when you’re working on a project like this, there’s so much room for improvisation. Your character in particular has so many hysterical one-liners. How much of that is scripted and how much of that is just you?
Jessica: The writing is amazing on this show. It felt really good as a person and also a six-foot-tall Black actress to have jokes on the page. But then, by the time we got to the third or fourth episodes, Bill was like, “Jessica and Jason are going to improvise, so we’re going to see what happens there.” They really trusted us throughout the season. There’s so much improvisation. I don’t even remember what lines were written and what I improvised, but I would say a large chunk was improvised.

PC: This series does such a beautiful job tackling universal themes from a comedic lens. Why do you think comedy lends itself to this type of storytelling?
Bill: It’s a cool question. I used to fear that it did not because back in the days where TV genres were so specifically defined as silly comedies, sitcoms, or heavy drama, it was harder for me and my personal voice to get a toehold. I’m going through a lot in my life. I’m very blessed. I’m very lucky to do what I do. But we’ve got family stuff going on where if I did not laugh my way through it I would feel like I was drowning. That’s how I handle my own situations. On this project, the coolest thing is that Brett, Jason, and I have all laughed our way through trauma and the dumpster fire that this world has been in the last five years. I’m lucky that it seems like there are enough like-minded people out there whom we’re hoping will dig this show.

Jason: One of our big focuses was calibrating that tone. You want to be respectful to these mental health issues that are real. But we also wanted it to be hilarious. It’s a comedy filled with funny people. We wanted to use humor to get to these issues. Calibrating tone from writing to performing to editing has been the main focus.

Make sure to follow Bill (Twitter/Instagram), Jason (Twitter/Instagram), Christa (Twitter/Instagram), Jessica (Instagram), Lukita (Instagram), and Michael (Twitter/Instagram). Watch Season 1 of Shrinking on AppleTV+