‘Shrinking’ Boss Bill Lawrence Says He Almost “Blew It” With Brett Goldstein’s Season 2 Character: “In My Head, Brett Was Roy Kent”
[This story contains spoilers from the first two episodes of Shrinking season two.]
Immediately after news broke that Brett Goldstein would be joining the cast of season two of Shrinking, which he co-created with Bill Lawrence and Jason Segel, speculation began about who the Ted Lasso star would play.
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The final moments of the first episode of Shrinking season two, “Jimmying,” answer that question in perhaps one of the most earth-shattering ways for Segel’s starring therapist dad Jimmy and his onscreen daughter, Lukita Maxwell’s Alice…
Goldstein takes on the pivotal role of Louis, the drunk driver who killed Jimmy’s wife and Alice’s mother, Tia.
But Lawrence says that casting almost didn’t happen.
“In my head, Brett was Roy Kent,” Lawrence tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Well, the truth is that real Brett, aside from the story behind this, is more like this character. He’s a sweet boy. He’s super sensitive, and this show would only work if you could have somebody that did awful things and yet you still want it to work out for them anyway. So, I almost blew it.”
If Segel hadn’t suggested that Goldstein play Louis, it may not have happened. But once the star did, Lawrence says he started to see it coming to life. The showrunner did have one condition for the Emmy-winning actor, though: He had to shave.
Introducing the man who was the catalyst to the entire series perfectly lays the groundwork for season two’s focus on forgiveness, which will see Jimmy, Alice, Gaby (Jessica Williams), Paul (Harrison Ford) and Liz (Christa Miller) all dealing with the topic, in one way or another.
Below, Lawrence also opens up about writing for his real-life wife Miller, taking inspiration from his own relationship with his kids when writing Alice and Jimmy’s scenes, and how he balances comedy and drama in the hit Apple series. [Editor’s note: Shortly after this interview, Shrinking was renewed for a third season.]
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We need to start with Brett Goldstein’s character reveal. When I realized who he would be playing, I gasped so loud, my partner across the apartment was worried something happened to me.
(Laughs) Good shit, right? I don’t think people see it coming.
Not at all. How did his casting in this role come to be?
When we pitched this show, we pitched it as the first year is about grief, the second year’s about forgiveness and the third year’s [about moving forward]. So, we knew we were doing this character the whole time. We were lucky that it was successful and received well, and so we were going into the next year going like, “Who’s gonna play this part in a way that you don’t have to ask people, but that you get to choose?”
As someone who has been doing TV forever, it’s a cool thing when people are being pitched to you, rather than the other way around. I almost blew it, because I used to give everybody shit about this with my wife, because after The Drew Carey Show, so many people are like, “Oh, your wife, Christa, she’s a beer-drinking Midwestern gal.” I’m like, “She is not. She’s not that all.” In my head, Brett was Roy Kent. I mean, he’s been a buddy of mine forever and a writer and comic friend of mine, but he was (growls) grump and gruffy and mean. Well, the truth is real Brett, aside from the story behind this, is more like this character. He’s a sweet boy. He’s super sensitive, and this show would only work if you could have somebody that did awful things and yet still want it to work out for them anyway. So, I almost blew it. He would never be so forward as to ask, and Jason Segel made it happen.
So you didn’t see him in the role at first. What changed?
Jason opened my eyes to it, and then I started to see it. I started to understand, because I knew Brett as a person, and he’s just such a ridiculously talented actor. Then, the joke became in the writers room, before I said to do it, it became, “You gotta shave your fucking beard and mustache off, dude.”
It was weird seeing him without the facial hair.
I don’t think he liked it. But I’m like, “It was the only dealbreaker for me. You’re gonna look like you’re 12,” which he does. And the only production nightmare was it grows back like every nine minutes, and he has to shave in between scenes. (Laughs)
After seeing Brett’s character, Louis, in the therapist’s office, I was expecting Jimmy to spiral again, and it seemed like he might at the end of episode one. But then in episode two, he seemed mostly fine.
If I told you that this season is about forgiveness — and I’m not going to tell you whether he does or he doesn’t — what’s interesting about that is that forgiveness is a process. It’s our intent that the character Jimmy understands why that guy is there, and thinks he’s been firm and given enough reaction that that’s it, and that he won’t have to deal with that shit anymore and can keep hiding from it. A very simple tenet of therapy, not to get way too in the weeds, is that there’s no real moving forward until you kind of approach the topic of forgiveness. And it’s not always black and white, meaning that you have to forgive someone for something they did. A lot of times it’s forgiving yourself.
But if I tell everybody that this season’s about forgiveness, I think the breadcrumbs have been left for almost every character to have to be dealing with that. One of the cool things I like about our fans is that smart viewers will be like, “Oh shit. Harrison Ford’s got kind of unresolved issues with his daughter,” and “Jimmy didn’t really behave that great with his own kid.” And you see some stuff as it involves Jessica Williams and the actress that plays her mom. So it’s basically the slow roll of what the season is about.
Jimmy and Alice seem to be in a much better place in the first two episodes than they were in season one. What can you tell us about what comes next for them, and if you take any inspiration from your own interactions with your children when it comes to writing their exchanges?
I do. Look, I want to make sure I give lots of props to the other writers of this show. Because if I sat here and said, “I’m strongest writing Jessica Williams stuff because I definitely have the voice of a young, strong Black female in Long Beach,” you’d be like, “What the fuck you talking about, man?” So, it’s such a good writing staff. Everybody participates on everything. That said, I feel like I’m best at being fairly authentic to stuff I know about, and I have a 24-year-old daughter, who grew up probably way quicker than she should have. Not because of massive trauma, hopefully — although she might tell you a different story — but because she grew up in the world of music, where I’m not connected to; and being whisked out of high school at 17; and seeing things; and being grown up in ways she shouldn’t and graduating, which we’re doing a lot of in this show, from your little girl or your son or whatever, suddenly turning a corner and being more adult, more emotionally mature than you in certain things.
I’ve got a wealth of experience to draw on with that. But I think the thing I hope people see, and are optimistic about, is that they see a relationship still in need of repair, even after last year. I think people that know my voice enough will know that, even though not everything’s going to work out great, I would hope they’d feel optimistic about that, because I’m definitely writing stuff about my own stuff with my daughter and sons.
How would you say Alice’s journey with forgiveness is going to be different from Jimmy’s?
Well, it’s three-fold. I’ll tell you three different stories that are coming down the pipe. One is we brought a catalyst character into the show that had a direct effect on Alice’s life and Jimmy’s life. And the amazing thing is, the reason clichés like “from the mouths of babes” exist, is that, what might be easier for one is a lot harder for another. So, I think their reactions to who Brett Goldstein plays will be very different, partially because for one, it’s a simple act of forgiveness. For Jimmy, it shines a spotlight on him as a father, and that dude is a walking embodiment, not only of the biggest trauma in his life, but if anybody remembers the first year and what we showed that happened, it’s also a massive spotlight on a father that did not come through for his kid, meaning himself. So it’s a lot more loaded. But I love exploring topics like this. Alice also will stumble through, as you see more episodes into the weird double line that you think you’re not necessarily accountable for your own behavior because of what you’ve gone through. So she’s mistreated some people that we’ve kind of set up, and people will see in these first six episodes, especially.
You mentioned not wanting to take too much credit away from the writers room. How do you all go about writing scripts?
We are so lucky that we have such a talented writing staff. Neil Goldman and I co-run the show, which means we run the writers room. And what happens is that we will come up with stories and outlines as a group, and then they will be assigned to an individual writer and that writer will write a draft whether it’s Neil, Brett, Ashley Nicole Black, Brian Gallivan, Bill Posley, Annie Mebane, Rachna Fruchbom, Sofi Selig, Sasha Garron or Zack Bornstein. The cool thing about this show is that the entire staff participates in every outline story.
It’s a weird tonal tightrope of a comedy that if we fuck up, it’s really hard to switch to the drama. If we do much too much drama, it’s hard to say it’s a comedy. We really police it as a group, because we have a huge chip on our shoulders about wanting to make sure that with the subject matter, you can’t argue that this is a comedy that’s at least joke forward and comedy forward.
The show really does balance comedy and drama so well. How did you all find that middle ground?
I don’t want to say I have a brand or something, but every writer is a prisoner to their own influences. Anybody who says they weren’t influenced or referenced by anything is bullshit, and I grew up loving comedies that still had emotional stakes: TV shows like M*A*S*H and The Wonder Years. I would even argue, kids watch The Office now, and Michael Scott, that character is ridiculous, and that he can still turn on a dime and touch you emotionally at the end is a testament to the writers and Steve [Carrell]. I love that stuff.
Way back in the days of Scrubs, we did so many episodes, there’s some stinkers in there, and the stinkers were always ones that we didn’t calibrate it enough, and it was too broad and silly, and then we try to make people care two seconds later about someone living or dying. Or it was way too heavy and dramatic, and then we tried to do some goofy fantasy or whatever. So we really police it. I think that’s partially making sure that it feels authentic when we’re being emotional and that we don’t try to cram too much heaviness into a funnier, light scene. It’s dumb, but we obsess about this stuff. I know we screw up sometimes, but we try not to.
In addition to the forgiveness aspects of this season, there are also other things looming, like Paul’s Parkinson’s disease and Grace’s upcoming case. What can you tell us about how those are going to come to fruition over this season?
With the Easter eggs of forgiveness, in terms of Grace (Heidi Gardner), we have somebody that pushed her husband off a cliff. I would imagine that is going to be somewhat of a journey to forgive herself for doing that, even if audience members see it. That’s why it happened. It’s all under kind of a thematic thing. Harrison Ford’s courage to play a dude with Parkinson’s matters so much to Brett and me. When we created the show with Jason, one of the things that he was cool to understand was my grandfather has Parkinson’s; Brett’s dad has Parkinson’s; my dad has Lewy bodies and Parkinson’s; I grew up working with Michael J. Fox. It seems like Harrison Ford is playing a character that loves what he does, but is self-aware that he’s not going to be able to do it forever and ever. And I think Harrison when he sometimes equates that to his actual life in acting, these things take on an added weight and poignancy. It’s a super cool story to tell.
Liz’s character, played by your wife Christa Miller, is somehow even funnier this season. How do you approach writing for her? Is it different than writing for other characters?
Well, I did her a great disservice that the rest of the writing staff helped me out with, which is, I think my wife is the funniest chick on the planet. I think she’s so funny on screen and in real life, she just gives me the giggles all day long. But I often forget that she’s actually a really, really good actress. And so one of the reasons we were kind of putting her really comedy forward, especially in the beginning of the show, is because the writing staff convinced me. I personalize everything with her, and they convinced me to do a story arc coming down the pipe for her under the umbrella of forgiveness, in which she does some shit that her character would not be proud of, ’cause it’s got kind of a dark turn. And I never think that way. She’s so good in it this year and pulls at your heartstrings. It really impressed me. I’m very proud.
Has writing Shrinking changed your relationship with therapy?
It’s been a really interesting journey. I’m lucky that I went through this on Scrubs, because Scrubs had this weird — and I’m not just always going back to that show — but it had this weird journey that even though it was received very well and did very well that there was initially of a like, “Oh, should they be doing this and showing doctors? Because we in America really loved our doctors to just kick open doors on TV and yell, ‘Stat.'” The odd thing is, at the end of the day, if you Google right now, “most realistic medical TV show,” more often than not, Scrubs comes up, and it’s because the drudgery and the people and the way you deal with the stress felt very real to people.
So the therapy aspect of this, we knew we were going to get popped a lot the first year. The most interesting thing is the therapy community, therapists themselves, who know this is a work of fiction, everybody embraced us and have been great. One of the funny backlash things in the first year is how many people are like, “Oh my God, if a therapist acted like Jason Segel’s character, there should be consequences.” And we’re like, “Yeah, no, we know. His patient’s gonna push someone off a cliff. It’s one of the stories we’re telling.”
The one thing I think I realized about therapy is, I don’t want to say that this show is doing anything other than trying to entertain, but if it can take any feeling of taboo off of not just seeing a therapist on your own. The amount of feedback that we get, especially when you have access to all of it immediately now, from people that find it great to see all characters but certainly closed-off dudes, like me, and everybody actually talking about their feelings and emotions and the shit they’re going through. I think people find that refreshing in a way that we were all surprised by.
Shrinking and Ted Lasso both had an original three-season arc as the pitch. Is that something you find yourself gravitating to more at this point in your decades-long career? [Shrinking has been renewed for season three.]
That’s a good question. I was talking to my great partners at Apple. If they want to keep doing Shrinking, I would totally keep doing it. I just think that the story of Jason Segel’s character, Jimmy’s wife dying and dealing with that and getting through that, if you’re after six years, still going, “I’m still sad about that thing that happened five years ago,” I’m like, “All right, you gotta tell a new story.”
So all it really means to me from a creative side, is man, it’s different from the world I grew up in. When I did Spin City and Scrubs and Cougar Town, the goal was write 1,000 episodes of a show, and the characters should never change. And we used to joke. An interviewer once asked Zach [Braff] in the eighth or ninth year of Scrubs, “Has your character, JD, changed it all?” And he’s like, “I think I have a beard now.” And that was it. Otherwise, I think he’s still like some weird man boy. What’s important to me is coming up with a story and knowing what the beginning, middle and end to it is. I think these [Shrinking] characters are rich. So I could tell another beginning, middle and end.
The other thing that has changed streaming television, which is the business side, it is so much easier to go to actors and actresses like a Harrison Ford or Jessica Williams and people that could be doing tons of things and say, “I’m going to tell a story that’s three seasons of 10 or 12 episodes and has a beginning, middle and end, and here’s what it is,” as opposed to when I used to make network TV shows going, “Hey, if you want to do this, you’re going to sign a piece of paper that says you’re doing it, I guess, forever?” So it’s a different world, but I love telling a story where the characters progress. It means a lot to me.
You mentioned that you and Brett have known each other for a long time. Apple TV+ has picked up options for him, Hannah Waddingham and Jeremy Swift. I know you sort of stepped back from Ted Lasso in season three. Would you have any role in it if they did another season?
Anything that you hear, it’s going to sound like a dodge, but it’s not. Here’s the thing, nobody will ever talk about Ted Lasso, because not only is it performance-wise, Jason Sudeikis is the character, but he’s the voice of the show. He’s the head writer. It’s so interesting, because it was such kind of a love fest and a tight-knit group over there. Out of 100 percent respect, the first time anybody hears who’s gonna be involved, what anybody’s doing, what’s happening, it’s because he’s ready to talk about it. So I’m going to politely say I’m in for whatever the captain of the ship wants me to be in for.
You talked about working on Scrubs a lot. You are reuniting with Matt Tarses on Steve Carrell’s HBO show. There’s not a lot known about it so far. Is there anything you can tell us?
The script’s really funny, I think, but I’m biased. To make this a thematic interview, the reason I’m able to do lots of things right now is that I’m lucky enough that there’s been super-duper talented men and women, writers, actors, actresses, producers, directors that I’ve worked with. The production designer on Shrinking was also the production designer on the first show I created, Spin City. So we’ve officially worked together for 30 years, which is cuckoo pants, because I’m only 39, but it’s bananas. So, I’m able to do Shrinking because Neil Goldman helps. I’m able to do almost any show because there’s other great, talented people. If anybody looks at the credits of Bad Monkey, the other head writer with me was Matt Tarses, so we did that show together. I can tell you this, because I can only write about things that I kind of know, — I don’t think I’ve said this publicly more than once — Matt and I got to know Carl Hiaasen when we were doing Bad Monkey, and Steve may or may not loosely be based on Carl Hiaasen as a kind of American storyteller who is very self-deprecating and humble. And in Steve’s case, he finds himself plopped down, because of his daughter, into the world of academia, of college life. But that’s all I’ll say.
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New episodes of Shrinking drop Wednesdays on Apple TV+ until the finale on Dec. 25.
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