In today’s episode of Bingeworthy, our TV and streaming podcast, host Mike DeAngelo laughs and cries all over again for Apple TV+’s new dramedy, “Shrinking.” Created by Bill Lawrence (“Scrubs,” “Ted Lasso”), Brett Goldstein (“Ted Lasso,” “Thor: Love and Thunder”), and Jason Segel (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “How I Met Your Mother”), the show follows Jimmy (Segel), a therapist who has gone off the deep end after the death of his wife. Ignoring the advice of colleagues, his schooling, and common sense, Jimmy decides to make big changes to the way he practices and lives his life, resulting in huge victories and even more drama. The series also stars Harrison Ford, Jessica Williams, Luke Tennie, Michael Urie, Lukita Maxwell, Christa Miller, and more.
Joining Bingeworthy to discuss the show is co-creator and star, Jason Segel. During the chat, Segel shared that the writers all decided to use Segel’s already established reputation with audiences to their advantage.
“Having written for myself a few times, one of the things that we all recognized is that I have accumulated some kind of goodwill with audiences where they think I’m a good guy,” Segel said. “We were like, ‘Let’s use that superpower for evil!’ and try to push Jimmy sort of towards, if not unlikable, someone who has the real characteristics of somebody going through a nervous breakdown, because we believed that we would be able to pull him back from there and it would be a more meaningful journey to start him out in really bad shape.”
Segel has made a name for himself by putting his characters through nervous breakdowns. One of the most famous instances is his semi-autobiographical romantic comedy, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” in which he plays a recently dumped, puppet-obsessed shlub on a vacation to find himself, which ends in a wonderfully realized puppet musical named, “Dracula’s Lament,” which struck a chord with audiences. During the interview, Segel shared that he not only has a “Dracula’s Lament” spinoff ready to go, but, if it weren’t for his recent opportunities, it may have already been made.
“I’ve thought about [‘Dracula’s Lament’] a lot. I was legitimately going to do it,” Segel shared. “I had the plan for what it was, I just got interrupted by doing ‘Shrinking’ and ‘Winning Time,’ but it was on my agenda right before those two things. I don’t know who has the rights to that musical – just let me know. Somebody call me.”
Segel himself has been involved in a small bit of fan-casting when it comes to superhero roles and, while Segel may not be everyone’s first thought for a hero, it turns out he already has a superhero property in mind to take on – not only that, but he’s written a script with “Yellowjackets” showrunners Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson. Get ready for Jason Segel: Space Ghost?
“The last thing I wrote was ‘Space Ghost,’ Segel said. “I wrote a movie version of ‘Space Ghost’ with my friends, Bart Nickerson and Ashley Lyle who made ‘Yellowjackets.’ We made a movie version of ‘Space Ghost,’ who I was a fan of and there are like several iterations of Space Ghost. He was like an earnest cartoon superhero like Batman and then became an ironic talk show host and then DC brought him back as like a grizzled superhero. And so, I wrote a movie about that as an arc of one character. That’s interesting to me…I love the script though. We wrote a hell of a script.”
The entire first season of “Shrinking” is streaming on Apple TV+. You can listen to the full interview with Jason Segel below:
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