‘Shrinking’ star Luke Tennie on the show’s Season 2 leap and Sean’s future
The Apple TV+ comedy series “Shrinking” was well-regarded in its first season, landing Emmy Award nominations for stars Jason Segel and Jessica Williams and a loyal fan base. But even the cast knew Season 2 had leaped in quality.
“I think the writers would agree,” co-star Luke Tennie tells Gold Derby. “At your most critical, you could give the first season, a review of, ‘It’s good.’ But there’s nothing you can say about this second season that’s short of very good. It’s exceptional.”
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Created by Segel, “Ted Lasso” co-creator Bill Lawrence, and “Ted Lasso” star and writer Brett Goldstein, “Shrinking” focuses on Jimmy (Segel), a therapist grieving the loss of his wife, and his expansive found family. Tennie plays Sean, a military veteran with post-traumatic stress syndrome who became one of Jimmy’s most significant patients in Season 1 and an eventual friend. The “Shrinking” ensemble includes television veterans like Christa Miller, Ted McKinley, and Michael Urie, fresh faces like Tennie and Lukita Maxwell, and legendary actor Harrison Ford. In Season 2, Goldstein appears in a guest-starring role as Louis, the man responsible for the death of Jimmy’s wife.
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Before being cast on “Shrinking,” Tennie had primarily appeared in dramatic projects. So in Season 1, a lot of his process was about trying to learn as much as possible from pros like Segel, his frequent scene partner. In Season 2, he says, the support from the cast and crew only grew larger.
“In Season 1, it was just like, ‘Hey, we’re here to figure this out.’ But in Season 2, when there was a moment that required any sort of focus or a little bit more concentration, the response became, ‘Hey, anything you need?’” Tennie says. “And the answer was usually no, but the fact that they asked was what made me feel so comfortable and confident making the choices I made or even taking risks that maybe didn’t make it in the final edit. That helped inspire and influence genetic material for the moments they did keep. I think we were very warm in Season 2, comfortable enough to ask if we’re uncomfortable.”
That comfort is apparent in Tennie’s performance. At the end of Season 1, Sean was seemingly on the right track – including moving into Jimmy’s poolhouse and partnering with Liz (Miller) to open a food truck. In Season 2, Sean’s unresolved issues about his father and his PTSD manifest in dangerous ways, including self-harm. At the end of the fifth episode, he confronts a violent group of construction workers over their careless behavior and allows himself to get beaten up. The attack lands him in the hospital.
“Sean has been given tool after tool after tool and has been removed from the environment in which he would have been able to use and refine those tools,” Tennie says of his character. “And that’s another thing this season touches on, using the tools that you’re given and showing what therapy and the commitment to making you change, what benefits it would give you when you sign up for improvement.”
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Despite the heavy material at times, however, “Shrinking” is ultimately a comedy. And Tennie, perhaps unexpectedly given the comedic heavy hitters in the cast, is the focal point of one of the season’s funniest sequences to date. At the start of episode six, a hospitalized Sean, compromised by painkillers, roasts the entire cast. A particularly funny joke is fired at Liz, who earlier in the season parted ways with Sean on their food truck venture in a failed effort to bring him closer to his father. “You ‘Blind Sided’ me, and then you blind-sided me,” Sean says to Liz, a reference to the Sandra Bullock movie about a rich white woman who adopts a Black teenager.
“Hey, look, man, drunk words are sober thoughts,” Tennie jokes of the scene, written by Goldstein. “It was sensational. I had such a blast. Brett actually asked me some of my favorite stand-ups. I know the purpose that Sean serves on ‘Shrinking.’ And more often than not, he’s not there to make you laugh. Oftentimes we’re laughing when he’s on screen. There are funny things that happen, but it was really cool for them to kind of, you know, put me in the driver’s seat of a comedic moment for a while. And I just can’t believe that that was real life. Very grateful.”
That Tennie got to do the scene in front of the entire cast is another plus. “Shrinking” was maybe sold as a show about Segel and Ford before it premiered in Season 1. But it has become a true ensemble with as many as nine significant characters getting space to shine in any given episode.
“I’ve learned it’s an essential thing,” Tennie says of the cast’s bond offscreen. “I think if that component is missing, people won’t buy it. There’s an amount of trust that’s needed for the moments of deep, dark drama that’s also required for people to get that whip-snap comedic sort of rhythm. They’re essential. And I used to think that having fun on a comedy was just a plus, like we’re there to work, we’re there to make this art. But no, I think fun is an essential ingredient. It would be flavorless and insipid without that special ingredient, which is the fact that we are all enjoying ourselves.”
“Shrinking” is past the halfway mark of its second season, and while Sean has experienced a lot of growth so far, Tennie says he’s most excited for what’s to come.
“What I’m so excited for is for audiences to see his progress,” he says. “There are certain categories of his life that have been off limits to the viewer because they’ve been off limits to Sean. And now that he’s making significant changes, we’re gonna see him finally venture into those categories.”
New episodes of “Shrinking” stream on Wednesdays on Apple TV+.
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