Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein had been working together for two years on Ted Lasso when they realized that both were separately exploring a similar idea around therapy and how to deal with pain through humor, so they started writing together.

The gamble paid off and two years later they premiered Shrinking, a dramedy that shares tone and spirit with the one starring Jason Sudeikis, the award-winning Apple TV+ series.

The main character is Jimmy (Jason Segel), a therapist grieving the death of his wife, to whom the saying "the shoemaker's children go barefoot" can be applied, because instead of facing the feeling of loss, he embarks on a journey of self-destruction, in the middle of which he begins to break the rules and tell his patients exactly what he thinks. Something that apparently yields good results.

A series about grieving, emotional, endearing, and with a lot of sense of humor, featuring a dream cast in which the star of How I Met Your Mother is joined by actors like Harrison Ford, Christa Miller (Scrubs), Jessica Williams (2 Dope Queens), Michael Urie (Ugly Betty), Luke Tennie (Deadly Class), and Lukita Maxwell (Generation).

Optimistic like 'Ted Lasso', but different

"Ted Lasso is an eternal optimist always looking for the ray of light in the darkness and wanting to connect with people. Jimmy, on the other hand, when we meet him, is a man who wants to self-destruct, so we can say that both series are similar, but this one comes from a darker place," established Bred Goldstein in an interview that the creators granted to EL ESPAÑOL in 2023 on the occasion of the premiere on Apple TV, where they also explained how they convinced Harrison Ford to join the series when he had never done one before, let alone a comedy.

Jason Segel in 'Shrinking'

"It was the dream casting, but none of us thought he would accept. We thought it was a chimera because he had never done television until now," Goldstein recalls.

Despite not trusting that he would accept, they had to try it out taking advantage of the fact that Bill Lawrence has known him for years and they live nearby, so they had crossed paths a few times.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge and the casting of Harrison Ford

But the door was truly opened by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who introduced Brett Goldstein and Harrison Ford when the three coincided in a London pub during the filming of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and the creator of Fleabag praised the Ted Lasso writer in front of his co-star.

With that first contact established, Lawrence decided to call Ford and gave him the pilot script with some concern, because "he knew that the character he was offering him was not the most prominent in that episode. It was Harrison Ford and he wasn't telling him he was the protagonist," Lawrence explains.

To his surprise, Ford was willing, but before committing, he wanted to know who Jason Segel was, whom he had never heard of. Lawrence suggested that he watch The End of the Tour and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a movie in which Segel has a full-frontal nude scene.

"A few days later, the first message from Harrison that we received was 'He has a nice penis'", Lawrence recounts with laughter, revealing that Segel has since framed that text message on a wall in his home.

*This article has been automatically translated using artificial intelligence