What happens when the creators of Ted Lasso join forces with one of the greats of American humor, Jason Segel? The answer takes the form of a mini-series that tackles mental health issues, whose sharpness of mind and sense of derision combine perfectly with the subject.
In Shrinkingthe one who played Marshall Eriksen in the cult series of the 2000s how i met her [How I Met Your Mother] plays Jimmy, a psychologist, who is himself grieving after losing his wife in a tragic accident. Become addicted to all kinds of substances, he decides one fine morning to circumvent the ethics of his profession and tell his patients what he really thinks. Against all expectations, and not without adventures, this will change the course of things for many of those he meets.
“I find that a grown man crying has powerful fun potential,” says Jason Segel, who has taken pleasure in probing comedy through the prism of reality for two decades. When the co-creators of ShrinkingBrett Goldstein (SuperBob) and Bill Lawrence (Scrubs), invited him to join the show’s creative team in 2021, the actor, writer and producer was thrilled to be able to bring humor and heartache together once again. “As an admirer of the filmmaker James L. Brooks, and in particular of his film Broadcast News, I like to manipulate the different tones that punctuate life, when hope and fear come together, when we laugh despite the pain. Sometimes the funniest moments are the ones that make us shed tears,” he explained at a press conference.
The Jason Segel Method
When Jimmy Laird realizes that simply asking his patients how they are feeling at the start of a session isn’t really helping them, he ditches this passive approach to therapy for something much more radical. “Concretely supporting others will allow him to recover from his nervous breakdown, and to rebuild his family”, continues Jason Segel, who was given carte blanche to bring his character to life. To do this, he also departed from a preconceived idea as old as the world. “For a long time, I believed, like many, that when I was told to go for a consultation, it was a criticism, even an attack, of my person. But it’s nothing more than a proof of love, ”he enthuses today.
According to Bill Lawrence, this collaboration is a real gift. “Jason is a respectful and lovable human and having a role in front of and behind the camera takes the show further, gives it emotional depth. He remembers, for example, that the actor worked on the texts until the last minute so that the dialogues were as funny and as authentic as possible on screen, even if it meant improving them during the game. Jason Segel’s natural playfulness was felt everywhere and all the time. The co-creator of Shrinking evokes a hilarious shoot, which lit up with the presence of the actor on the set. “Jason always arrived in a crazy jumpsuit before changing and Harrison Ford [aussi de la distribution], even though he was laughing at the beginning, became completely crazy about it. The whole cast followed the trend, so much so that I wondered if there was a cult around the onesie “, he jokes.
Humanity First
If it is important for Bill Lawrence to show viewers characters a thousand leagues from perfection, the choice of a partnership with Jason Segel seems, again, obvious. “In the United States, the doctors and nursing staff that we see in the series are always very serious. Jason, on the other hand, is funny and goofy, and I like the version with a lot of flaws he offers of Jimmy,” he explains. According to him, keeping fiction close to reality brings a dose of humanity to Shrinking. “Like everyone else, shrinks also have problems. It’s important to show it. »
“You never know if you’re going to be able to capture the stories that people want to hear, but I think viewers will find themselves in Shrinking, because we imagined the series with benevolence”, continues Bill Lawrence. He believes that if the public needed optimism at the time of the release of Ted Lasso, he must now realize that psychological suffering is perhaps more common than we think. “Our series is about the journey from darkness to light. We want to say, thanks to Jimmy Laird, that grief is both something that can pull us down, sink us, but also lift us up,” he clarifies.
Because he likes to write optimistic, well-intentioned and hopeful comedies, Bill Lawrence wants to finally make laughter a real collective therapy. “People are still nervous about having fun with dark things. But that’s how we get out of it the best, laughing at gravity! he notes. For his part, Jason Segel confides that he gladly uses humor to lower the guard of viewers and touch them with subjects that remain taboo, such as mental health. “Humor is a great way to be honest in a world of appearances,” says the comedian.