Jason Segel Unpacks the Weight of ‘Shrinking’ Season 2 After Finale: “The Wrong One Died”

Logo text

[This story contains spoilers from the Shrinking season two finale, “The Last Thanksgiving.”]

Jason Segel‘s Jimmy saved a life in the Shrinking season two finale.

The final moments of season ender, titled “The Last Thanksgiving,” saw Brett Goldstein’s Louis literally steps from taking his life after being uninvited from Friendsgiving and overwhelmed by his grief following his drunken accident that killed Tia (Lilan Bowden), the late wife to Segel’s character, Jimmy. However, the latter steps in to save the man who killed his wife.

The finale picked up right after Jimmy’s penultimate episode breakdown in Paul’s (Harrison Ford) lap, finally allowing himself to feel the weight of the mistakes he made with his daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell) following Tia’s death. Paul told Jimmy what he’s known all along, that his biggest hurdle with forgiveness isn’t with the man who killed his wife — Brett Goldstein‘s Louis — but with himself after “shitting the bed” with his daughter.

Jimmy struggled to find it in himself to confront Alice about all the ways he failed her. But with continued encouragement from Paul and a brief conversation with Liz (Christa Miller) from their balconies, he finally talked to his daughter about how he “fucked it up.” She agreed he messed up and was “a bad dad for a second,” but told him he left out all of the good things he did for her while she was growing up.

“There are a lot of important storylines, but, for me, the relationship between Jimmy and Alice, in a lot of ways, is the primary storyline, at least in Jimmy’s life, as it should be,” Segel tells The Hollywood Reporter of the season two ending. “A relationship between a parent and a child should be built on this idea that when the thing happens, you will be protected and taken care of by your parents, and Jimmy ran away. So, for me, a huge part of this character arc is Jimmy making right by that, because everything else is forgivable, except maybe that.

The root of Alice and Jimmy’s biggest struggles this season was that Jimmy wouldn’t help Louis, despite always helping everyone else around him. Alice forgave the man who made a mistake, and even befriended him, but Jimmy couldn’t do the same. In fact, he told Louis to stay away from Alice, even though he knew her having a friendship with him was helping her cope with the loss.

Below, Segel unpacks Jimmy’s growth to get to the finale moment in season two, his character’s journey with forgiveness, what it was like reuniting with How I Met Your Mother‘s Cobie Smulders onscreen and acting alongside co-creator Goldstein going into the already renewed season three.

***

Your co-creator Bill Lawrence has spoken openly about how you sort of pushed him to consider Brett Goldstein for the role of Louis. Why did you think he was the best choice for the role. [Segel, Goldstein and Lawrence co-created Shrinking.]

Well, I think it’s really easy to nominate a villain for why your life is not the way you want it to be, and most of the time, I think that when you make someone else the focus of all of your resentments, it has as much to do with you as it does them. So I wanted somebody who really felt like a reflection of Jimmy. I wanted him to be a contemporary. I wanted him to be as close in age as possible, and Brett and I are the same age. So story-wise, it made total sense. He felt like a reflection of Jimmy.

And then, on a more personal note, I know the breadth of what Brett is capable of. I also had the experience of being really known for one character when I kind of made it, or whatever, and I know that Brett’s experience is really strongly linked to being Roy Kent [in Ted Lasso]. And I think that one of the reasons I write at all is because I get to cast myself in parts that people normally wouldn’t hire me for. I mean, I said to Brett, “What is the point of being a writer and a creator of this show if you don’t take the part that you know would show your range and would force you to stretch?” It’s the whole point of doing any of this, and so I think I just said out loud what everybody deep down knew was the right thing.

We see Jimmy grow a lot this season — with Sean (Luke Tennie), putting Gaby (Jessica Williams) ahead of his own desires, with Louis, of course, and with Alice. How did you all decide where you wanted to take him this season?

We pick a word each season that is sort of our true North. Season one was grief, and season two was forgiveness, which I think sort of entails cleaning up the wreckage of the past. So, whereas season one was about the wreckage and really about just getting Jimmy back to zero, I think this season was about taking stock of everything that he had left in the wake of that journey and trying to make it right.

Jimmy’s growth, specifically with Alice, was especially beautiful to see in so many scenes. How was it bringing that storyline to life with Lukita Maxwell?

There’s a lot going on in the show. There’s a lot of characters, and there are a lot of important storylines. But, for me, the relationship between Jimmy and Alice, in a lot of ways, is the primary storyline, at least in Jimmy’s life, as it should be. I mean, you want Jimmy to get to the point where he would leave it all behind for Alice, including his therapy practice and all that. I think that’s what makes it the primary relationship. So much of it, to me, is about getting that dynamic the right size and wading through these different combinations of who is parenting who at what moment, until finally, it ends up where it’s supposed to be, where Jimmy is taking care of his daughter because he failed so spectacularly at that when the thing happened. A relationship between a parent and a child should be built on this idea that when the thing happens, you will be protected and taken care of by your parents, and Jimmy ran away. And so, for me, a huge part of this character arc is Jimmy making right by that, because everything else is forgivable, except maybe that.

That was actually one of my questions. You think going into this season that Jimmy’s biggest struggle with forgiveness is going to be with Louis, and that is there. But it was moreso his struggle with forgiveness with himself and the way he sort of abandoned Alice.

It’s also why Paul Rhodes (Harrison Ford) is such a great therapist; he knows the whole time. He is calling Jimmy out at every turn saying, “No, it’s not that.” “No, it’s not that.” “It’s not that. You’re going to be playing Whack a Mole until you deal with the real thing.” He finally gets there and looks in the mirror and looks his daughter in the face and says the thing that he needed to say for both of them.

There were some really deep moments between Jimmy and Paul this season, like when Jimmy tells him if there’s ever a time he needs to step away from therapy he’ll tell him, and Paul inviting Jimmy to be the person he has his last drink with. What was it like playing those scenes out with Harrison Ford?

Harrison is my friend, man. It’s really crazy, and he’s my contemporary. I just feel honored to do these scenes with him, and he does something very generous. Very early on in season one, he just tries to break through any sense of awe that he knows you probably have towards him and just wants to make great work. So I go into these scenes like, like I’m playing one-on-one basketball with Michael Jordan, or something, like I better, I better bring my A-game. I also am allowed to marvel when he goes full Harrison, and I’m like, “Oh, there he is, in all his glory.” So I feel really lucky. I try not to be too much of a spectator when we’re doing these scenes. But it’s a little tricky sometimes.

I really loved how Brian (Michael Urie) was one of the first people to forgive Louis, and even developed a friendship with him and eventually encouraged Alice to speak with him. Why do you think that was the right call for the storyline?

I think it really meshes well with this other storyline going on where Brian is trying to figure out if he would make a good dad and overcoming that. It’s almost that by Brian being surrogate dad to Alice to help her through this situation, he is learning in himself that he is a really good caretaker. So there’s something about that whole side storyline, which is really interesting. Writing-wise, they pulled off a real magic trick here, because the storyline really is Louis and Jimmy, but Jimmy and Louis see each other in episode one, and then not again until like halfway through the season, and then again at the very end of the season. But it’s like this thing of these two men need to make peace with each other, but it’s done through Alice and Brian. It’s a really amazing magic trick.

Jimmy finds himself at odds with Gaby and Liz at other points. What was it like playing these rough patches out with Jessica Williams and Christa Miller?

Jimmy’s often the brunt of people’s anger and frustration. I think that’s sort of the burden of how everyone’s kind of linked by their orbit around Jimmy. He’s sort of this cog in the wheel of people’s frustration, because look, without tension, where’s the comedy? And so everyone’s mad about something, and it’s gonna have to go through Jimmy one way or another. So Jimmy takes a lot of shit, but it’s really fun because it’s all different versions, because everyone has a different personality on this show.

Jessica is a really formidable scene partner. She’s funny as hell. She’s also incredibly present. So those scenes are very alive when you’re filming them. They’re just very present, and then the scenes with Christa, she is getting to show how amazing she is at this job. She is just a fantastic actress, fantastic comedic actress, and she also gets to show a ton of vulnerability, which I don’t know that she’s gotten to show. I’m really happy that I get to be kind of a point guard and serve the passes up for my friends and my co-stars to really thrive.

You mentioned earlier that Jimmy doesn’t really see Louis and Alice has a relationship earlier. We see Alice forgive him because that’s what Tia would do. How did it make you feel when you realized that was going to be the crux for her to forgive him?

It’s really amazing when you see what an actual physical mix Lukita’s Alice is between me and the woman who plays Tia (Lilan Bowden). You see Alice, you’re like, “Oh, she is half of each of them.” And it’s interesting. Because of that, you know who Tia is completely by her absence in seeing the way Alice behaves. And there’s something emotional about that. It’s like the third side of the triangle is missing, and Alice has to carry both personalities. There’s a line we cut from the finale that kind of speaks to how I feel, which I think is one of the big things he’s struggling with. “If it had to be somebody, I wish it had been me and not your mom. She would have been better for you if it had to just be one of us.” When I’m performing, that is what I have Jimmy carrying, is like, “The wrong one died.”

That’s powerful and impactful and, I imagine, hard to carry as Jimmy.

It means you’re constantly walking around with shame and sadness. So, when I play Jimmy, it’s like somebody who has an emotional, twisted ankle. It’s just always with you. You know what I mean? You can function, and you don’t need to keep talking about the twisted ankle, but it’s there for the person who has it, you know?

You and Cobie Smulders had a How I Met Your Mother reunion in episode 10. How did that come about? What was it like sharing the screen with her again?

It was the best. The part was written, and then we were trying to decide who to cast. I really quickly said, “What about Cobie?” And everyone said, “Yes.” And then we made a phone call. I mean, it was just super organic how it all played out. It was dreamy. On How I Met Your Mother, we were rarely combined, and so it felt really cool. And I think the other thing — I was actually just talking about this today — I think when I watched that scene, I feel like a weight to it that goes beyond two people meeting for the first time, which I think is what feels interesting about it, what feels electric about it. There was something really meaningful. When we made that show, Cobie and I were the youngest, and so we knew each other from basically our early 20s to our early 30s. These are really formative years when you’re becoming who you are and getting things wrong and getting them right and figuring out life, and to be standing across from each other 10 years later, looking at each other like, “Hey, we’re both still here, and look at us all grown up.” I think you can feel that weight to the scenes like this look of recognition between the two characters that I think feels really good for what the storyline is supposed to be.

It was really great to see Jimmy sort of happy for a second.

Yes! Totally. You get to see a little bit of what pre-accident Jimmy might have been like.

Jimmy and Louis reunite in the final episode when Louis is on the verge of jumping in front of the train, and then Jimmy shows up and essentially saves his life. That was an emotional scene to watch. What was it like playing that out with Brett and where does that leave Jimmy and Louis going into season three?

I don’t know where it leaves them in terms of season three. I’m not that hippie-dippie as an actor, but it was just a quiet night, and it was a quiet scene, and they intentionally set the cameras up, even for our close-ups, they were set up on the other side of the tracks [with a long lens]. It just felt like Brett and I sitting on a bench, talking to each other. It felt tender and intimate and just how it was supposed to be.

***

All episodes of Shrinking season two are now streaming on Apple TV+.