Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - EMMY NOMINEE: Jason Segel on Working with Harrison Ford in “Shrinking” and His Comedy Career (October 2024)

Episode Date: September 13, 2025

Nominated for an Emmy for his starring role in Shrinking, Jason Segel has proven his versatility across dramas and comedies over the last 20 years. In this sitdown from October 2024, Segel opens up to Willie Geist about working alongside Harrison Ford in Shrinking, his long run of comedies from Forgetting Sarah Marshall to How I Met Your Mother, and the life-changing advice he received from Judd Apatow.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks, as always, for clicking and listening along. Very excited to bring you my conversation this week with actor Jason Siegel. He has been in some of the funniest movies of the last 20 years. He got his big break with Freaks and Geeks, a short-lived but now cult classic series created by Judd Apatow. It had Jason Siegel. It had Seth Rogan, James Franco, Beechs. Izzy Phillips, all these young actors who went on to do great things, many of them alongside Judd Apatow along the way.

For Jason Siegel, that means movies like Knocked Up, This Is 40, and then creating and writing his own film, forgetting Sarah Marshall, which was a big hit. And of course, famously had full frontal nudity. Stay tuned for a great story from Jason and our conversation about his mother seeing that scene for the very first time. He's now starring and has been for, this is the second season in the Apple TV Plus series, shrinking his co-star Harrison Ford. It's a show he created with the guys who did Ted Lasso, including Brett Goldstein, who was one of the stars, of course, of Ted Lasso. The series is about therapists, and Jason plays a therapist who is in the middle of a crisis of his own, and he'll explain all that to you. Love hearing, too, about the moment when he found out that Harrison Ford was actually. going to do the series. They thought that was a pipe dream when they pitched it to him.

He said yes, and it's gone on to become one of the best series in all of television. He was nominated, Jason was, for an Emmy Award last year for his performance in season one, now out with season two. You know him also from The Muppets, and of course, playing Marshall on the long-running hit CBS sitcom, How I Met Your Mother, has had a fascinating life, a fascinating career, and we talk through it all right now. So just sit back, relax, and enjoy a great conversation with Jason Siegel on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Jason, thanks for doing this, man. Oh, it's my pleasure. We were just saying we're in like mini chairs shrinking-ish, like a therapist session here. Yes. As you acknowledge, we're also giant dudes and the chairs are a little small. But if people don't know, we're both about

six four. Yeah. Play a little high school ball. That's right. And we're in the back-to-school night chairs. Yes. For sure. Here we go. Yeah. Congratulations on season two of shrinking. Thanks. It's got to feel good to feel this level of anticipation for it because it means people loved season one so much. So how are you feeling like it dropped today a few hours ago? Yeah, it came out today. It's exciting. We had the strike in between season one and two, so we had a big gap.

And I think as excited as the audience is for it to come back, so are we. We had to hold off on filming. But one of the benefits of that was we got to see the show. So we all, you know, in a season one of a show, you don't know the tone yet. Right. You're all sort of guessing and feeling off of each other. I think it's this. I think it's this.

And now we've seen it. And so we were able to come in season two just like, we knew what the bull's eye was. Right. We knew how dramatic you could get, how comedic you could get, and like what you could paint with. And, man, we're proud of it. When did you know in season one, as those episodes rolled out, that you guys were on to something? Because, as you know, very well, you can make something you think is great. And for whatever reason, people don't respond to it the way you thought they would.

Yeah. Was there a moment? where you're like, oh, this is broken through, people are enjoying this? I had a hunch that when Harrison Ford said he'd be in it, that it was going to be good, if I'm totally honest with you. I mean, look, I'm going to tell you the reality.

There's like a part that's right for Harrison Ford. So you're like, who should we cast in this? And we're, oh, we should offer it to Harrison Ford. You do that so that for three days you can tell your friends you have an offer out to Harrison Ford. And then you're going to cast the real guy. And then Harrison Ford said yes. And then there's this like panic look.

Harrison Ford's going to show up here. We better get the script good. And so I think it was at that moment where the show changed a little bit because Paul, his character was going to be more of a check-in advisor kind of guy. Then all of a sudden we had one of the best actors of all time. And so it became this sort of two-hander, father-sonny dynamic for, for the first season. I think we could also feel

this tone that we were headed towards as a true north was these like James Brooks movies from when I grew up. Broadcast News, Terms of Endearment, where you're laughing through the hardest moments because the show is about grief. I mean, a really terrible thing has happened. My wife has died in a car accident, and we're all trying to get through it.

But I think what those movies did really well, what is the truth about life, is that you laugh your way through those moments. It's the only way we get through them. When I see a drama that is heavy on top of heavy, my reaction is, okay, I get it. I know life is hard. But when I see people laughing their way through things,

I think, oh, those are my friends. And so I think when we started to feel we were hitting that tone, it felt right. So where do we find, for people who haven't started yet, where do we find Jimmy as we embark on season two? Season two? Yeah. Yeah, so season one was about,

getting this guy out of a hole. It was just like, let's get him back to zero. It was like friends performing emotional triage on somebody. And for those who don't know the premise, it's about a therapist who is continuing to practice therapy while he is himself having a nervous breakdown, which is a great premise. Season two is like once you get to zero, what now? cleaning up the wreckage of the past. The other thing that I think is the most compelling about this season, the storyline I relate to most, is there was a great movie where there's an avalanche, and it's called Force Majore.

There's an avalanche, and the father of a family who should protect his family runs away, and then everybody survives the avalanche. And the movie is about the family has to continue going on, knowing that like the thing happened and the father ran away. It's like the ghost in the room, you know? And I think that that happened here. The worst thing happened. My daughter's mother was killed in a car accident.

And as opposed to me stepping up and taking care of her, he ran away. And so how can she ever trust him again? How can she ever say my dad will be there if I need him? And it's repairing that relationship is a big part of season two, forgiveness. The other thing is, in a season two of a show, the whole cast gets to shine. You get to have people step up and have these arcs that they didn't necessarily get to have in season one. And I've said it before, but every one of these cast members could be the lead in their own show. Yeah.

I mean, they're so good. And so you get to see, you get to see everybody thrive this year. The best thing I can say on a great show like this is you're happy when every character enters a scene. There's no weak link where you go, okay, this is the part where it dips or whatever. It's like everybody's so strong in that group. Yeah. It's a lesson that Bill Lawrence has learned over and over again, and I learned it working with Judd, Apatow, back when we were making those movies.

You write the best script you can. You write a script good enough that if you just shot the script, it would be great. And then you cast actors who are better than the material, and you let them kick it up that next notch. And I think that that has happened here. We have the best writers in the entire world, and we also have a cast that takes these scenes and says, got it, and then runs with it.

Did you relate to anything in your character personally? I mean, was there, he's definitely vulnerable. He is empathetic in many ways, despite his faults like we all have. He's a guy you are rooting for through all this, partly because of the grief he's been through, but also because of how he's trying to put it all back together. Did you see anything in him that you could relate to? Yeah.

I think that even though there is like a literal loss in, in these characters' lives, the death of a family member. I think we all, it came out right after COVID. So there was a sense of grieving collectively. Like a car accident took his wife. But for all of us, something, this force of nature came through and took two years of our lives. And all of a sudden, everyone was looking around, like, what happened?

And there was a sense of powerlessness. And I think a lot of us tapped into that idea of that, man, sometimes life just life's on you, hard. And you get through it with your friends. The other thing, which is like tangential to your question, that I was very excited about is a nervous breakdown isn't pretty. And we also needed the main character, Jimmy, to be likable, to remain likable. And in a stroke of kind of self-awareness, I'm like,

I'm Muppet guy. I'm Marshall on how I met your mother. We've garnered some currency of goodwill. Let's spend it. Like, let's push him as far towards unlikable as we can and have faith that people's reaction is going to be like, oh my God, I hate him, that their reaction will be, I hope he gets better.

So we were able to make Jimmy, like, we were able to paint a nervous breakdown in grieving pretty dark. and still have it be funny and relatable. That's so interesting. I wondered for you as an actor if this material part of it was so appealing because it was so counter to other things you've done and been so well known for over the course of your career.

Yeah, I just think as I'm getting older, I'm thinking about different stuff. And I, you know, this show for me is a little like the end of an M. Night Shyamalan movie where like all the parts make sense all of a sudden. After how I met your mother, I hit this moment personally where I started doing dramas in high school. That's how I got seen.

I got seen in a high school play doing The Zoo Story by Edward Albee. And it turned out I was good at comedy. And that's sort of what the first 10 years of my life and career were. But in my head, I thought, but I think I'm good at that other stuff. So I spent consciously like seven or eight years after how I met your mother ended, trying to just take parts where I got to find out if I was good at that stuff. And I got better and better at it. But it wasn't like, you know, when you're like, watch, I'm going to do this new stuff.

You're like ready for Hollywood to be like, oh, we're very excited. And like, no one cared. Right. You know what I mean? Good for you. Have fun. But then all of a sudden this show came along and it required equal parts, drama and comedy and I had built up those skills and I knew how to do comedy and all of a sudden I got to do

them both on the same show. Some days you show up to do a big set comedy piece and some days you show up to rip your guts out in front of the camera and that's the most exciting thing. We can cut this out if you don't want to talk about it because it's a little bit of a spoiler, but in season two you introduce a new character who's very important to the story. Is that vague enough? Yeah, sure, absolutely. Do you want to talk about that or should we leave it to the... Yeah, well, I think it's... It's out there.

Yeah, episodes one and two are out. Yes, in the pilot, somebody returns into our lives who has basically... is the cause of all of our grief. It's the person who ruined our lives. And he's played by Brett Goldstein, which is just awesome.

And the journey of season two, our true north for season two, we always pick a war. word is forgiveness. And so it's finding the strength to forgive the person you think you need to forgive, but then also looking in the mirror and figuring out where the, what the cause of the destruction really was. You and your daughter certainly working through trying to find that forgiveness in this season.

Yeah. That character, I needed him to be a mirror of Jimmy. And so it's why we picked Brett Goldstein because we're the same age. and he is such a great actor. And I think that there is something really electric about somebody stretching their muscles for the first time in front of an audience. And not that Brett has anything to prove,

but he hadn't gotten to show this range, and he's a killer out there. For people watching or listening who don't know the name, but certainly know the face, he was in Ted Lassow, one of the stars of Ted Lassow, among others. He was Roy Kent.

Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And also, he is one of the co-creators, an executive producer along with you on this series. I love the origin story of how this came to be for you, which is you were on one of your famous walks or runs, right? It's so crazy how life works. Yeah. I was on a long walk in Ohio.

This is like why life isn't fair. Okay? I was on a walk. And apparently the producer, one of the producers of this show, saw me on a walk and texted Bill Lawrence. Hey, just saw Jason Siegel. He looks happy. Let's do a show with him. And here we are.

It's that easy. You want to make it in Hollywood? It's a good thing I was smiling. In that moment. Yeah, exactly. Do you remember what you were doing in hindsight? Were you singing? I might have been singing.

I, uh, sometimes I put on sign sealed delivered. Oh yeah. Sing and dance down the street. Yeah. I'm very muppity. I am. I live in a small town as well, so I'm kind of like Big Bird. I just bop through town waving at people, spreading goodwill and joy. I love that. I'm the same. I'm a walker too. Yeah. My wife always says, are you running for mayor or something? Stop, say hello, shake hands, you know? Yeah. It's a good way to be, I think. Absolutely. You open, you know? Yeah. I don't start out the day particularly, um, happening. be sometimes. I like to be perfectly honest. And one thing I've learned is that I have some control over

that. Not a ton. But if I take a walk, if I do some of the tools that I've learned, I can make my day pretty nice with a little bit of effort. So Bill Lawrence, who you mentioned, he's done Ted Lasso and scrubs and Spin City. I mean, the list is super long. He's brilliant. So from that phone call that he gets, hey, let's do a show with Jason Siegel. What comes after that? Had they already been cooking up a little bit, shrinking? Yeah, so what I understand is that Brett and Bill had had similar ideas about a therapist going through a crisis. And they had a talk.

They pitched their ideas to each other, and they were close enough that they figured out how to combine them. So it became one idea. And then they came to me and gave me a very loose pitch of a premise and asked if I wanted to play the guy. And I said, yeah. And I write as well. and they were very kind and generous of letting me be a co-creator

and help write the pilot with them. But honestly, like, having written a bunch of stuff from scratch, you know, I caught a free ride on this one. I'm proud of my contributions, but I got very lucky that those guys came to me. The train was already moving down the tracks. Yeah, and I got to hop on, yeah. And so that, you, obviously, at this point in your career, you don't jump on something you don't really believe in.

So even before Harrison Ford was cast, you had a sense there was something special there. Yeah. Yeah, I did. Well, I think Bill is amazing. I think Brett is incredible. And also, I think when you get on early enough and have some contribution to shaping the story and the tone. And like I said, being able to say that thing about, yeah, let's do it, but let's push him as far as we can. Let's dig that hole as deep as possible that he has to get out of. It's something interesting about starting a character in a hole. I did the same thing in forgetting Sarah Marshall. I think that starting someone at rock bottom is actually, a very hopeful place to start because the only place to go is up. If you start someone on their wedding day, you're like, oh, this is going to get bad. Right. You know?

But you start somebody at rock bottom and you know that you're going to be on a journey of them getting better and better and better. And it's actually a very hopeful place to start. And he wants so badly to be better for his daughter and his friends, but then he's the backslides like we all do. Yeah, it's very relatable. Getting better is not linear, right? And there's these things where you're like, oh, I think.

I think I've got it. Yeah. And then you try to go on a date. You're like, nope, I didn't. Apparently, I did not have it. I know that feeling, unfortunately. So Harrison Ford says yes. Yeah.

Next thing, you know, you find yourself in scenes across from a guy who's hero to all of us growing up. Kind of goes without saying. Even with all your experience and your talent as an actor, was that first day on set in a scene, like, I can't believe I'm sitting here across from Harrison Ford? Or were you able to work through that? You don't know my actual experience of it? Because maybe it's unique to me. But if you have a complicated brain that wants to tell you that something is wrong

or you didn't get it quite right or you zigged where you should have zagged or what could have been, and all of a sudden you find yourself standing across from Harrison Ford doing acting, it is impossible to feel like it didn't all work out. You know what I mean? I was standing there like, oh, you're right where you're supposed to be. And that was a, I've continued that feeling of peace since we started shrinking. That's amazing. Yeah.

That voice gets overruled by reality. Yeah. You know? That's so cool. It was validating in some way. Yeah. Like it doesn't get better than I'm doing comedy and drama. across from one of my idols,

and also with new friends who are as formidable, Jessica Williams is a genius. She's great. Yeah. When I am doing comedy with her and drama, I have to be present and I have to be on my toes and I have to bring my A game. The last time I felt that way was with Paul Rudd

when we were making our movies, where it was like, you cannot phone it in. Yeah. You better be ready. And I have that with each of my castmates. Ford, too, he maintains his Harrison Fordness, a little gruff as the character. Yeah. But he's also so funny in this.

Like, he can do both, clearly. Yes. And he appears to relish those opportunities where he gets to be funny. Yeah, I think all of us, especially when you're a performer or an artist, have parts of us we haven't gotten to fully show to an audience that we want to be known. And for him, I think Harrison believed that he could do some of these big set conversations. comedy pieces that no one had seen him do. And he does. And he kills him. There's a, um, there is an episode in season one where Harrison Ford shows up stones to a birthday party. And it is as funny as anything I've ever seen. Like, he's a genius. And he goes all in on that comedy.

Yeah, he goes all in. Everybody on the show goes all in. Everyone cares really deeply about the show. That is another thing that is really unique to this set. Everyone really wants it to be great. It's funny because of the Star Wars and the Indiana Jones of all, I think people's initial reaction was like, what's Harrison Ford doing in that series, right? What is this going to be? What is this? And it's been, so in some way, it's been this incredibly pleasant surprise for a lot of people.

Yeah, and I think, I don't want to speak for him, but I think maybe for him, too. I'm sure he showed up not exactly knowing what this experience was going to be like, but it's actually quite challenging. You know, it's not a typical sitcom where you, you kind of pull out move number 22. Right. You know?

Right. All of a sudden, within one scene, you're doing comedy. And then this turn happens where Harrison Ford's character realizes his Parkinson's isn't going to allow him to do something any longer. And there's a turn in the scene where you have to dig deep. And it's everything an actor could hope for. You guys are all good together. It's just, it works.

Yeah. Sometimes it works. Other times it doesn't. It's like, this is a good group. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Stick around to hear more from Jason Siegel right after the break. Welcome back now more of my conversation with Jason Siegel. You mentioned your early days as an actor with The Zoo Story.

Yeah. And it's amazing to me that you were discovered at that point and like hopped into Hollywood from basically a school play that maybe was more of a showcase. Yes. Yeah, I had my high school acting coach named Ted Walsh. She just recently passed away. Changed my life. I was on the basketball team like you. My nickname was Dr. Dunk because I had won a dunk contest. What was your, how do you throw a two-hander? Like, what's... I could do it all, but my... Wow. I used a little bit of lying. I pretended that I couldn't see. I pulled the jersey over my head. Oh, that's great. Yeah. And I had somebody spin me around and then I dunk, but I could see through the jersey. It's all theater.

You got to give them something. You got to give them something. Anyway, I was playing basketball, but I was doing secret shame acting at night. That was the kind of rebel I was. I was sneaking off into the night and doing acting. Such a bad boy. Oh, yeah, trouble. So I was slowly falling in love with acting.

I never did one of the big school plays because I would have been made fun of by the basketball team. You know, it was like that eight. age. But I was getting better and better. And the head of the acting department came to me and he said, hey, I think that you might be good at this. How about you and I put on a little play? And I'll direct it. He said, and you and this other guy will star in it. We'll just do it in the little black box theater. 30 people. That's it. I said, okay. So we put on a very complicated play. And there was this audience out there of adults I didn't recognize. And the next week, my parents sat me down and said that that was a secret showcase where he had invited casting directors from the different studios and from around Hollywood

to come see me act without telling me. And he sat my parents down and said, I think your son can do this for a living if he wants to. There's some people ready to help him out. It says a lot about what he thought of you as an actor. And also, they didn't want to freak you out and tell you if this was an audition or something. He handled it perfectly. And my life changed after that. So what was the first job after that? So the showcase, these people like you. Yeah. I did one of the great classics after that called Dead Man on Campus, where I played a college student who was just, we won't get into it. It was filthy. And then I did another teen movie called Can't Hardly Wait. Sure. Well, I did a movie called SLC Punk, actually, which was my first real acting in a

movie. And it was pretty cool. This is where I was a bad boy. IDs were not digital at that point. And I was not 18 years old. And so I went to downtown Atlanta, I got a fake ID. And I filmed my first movie, my first real movie using a fake ID, fake paperwork. Wow. I'm still proud of it. Very nice. And then months later, I auditioned for Freaks and Geeks. I was 19 years old and that's when I met Judd and my life changed again.

Freaks and Geeks, cult classic. I think it was only like 18 episodes or something like that. Yeah, 13 or 18, something like that range. We knew that the show was going to get canceled because, and we were young, we didn't know the ins and outs of Hollywood. But there's a beautiful craft service table, okay, like with deli meats and breads and all this stuff. And around mid-season, it started to become like a box of corn pops and some creamer. Like, oh, we're getting canceled.

I see. And so they did something really cool. Sometimes when a show is canceled, you find out, and they just pull the plug. You just don't go to work the next day. So they shot the finale of Freaks and Yeeks mid-season. and held it. Oh, wow. Knowing that at some point

the plug just might be pulled, and so we would have the finale, we would have an ending. And that's why there's an ending to the show. Wow, I didn't realize that. That's amazing. It's really smart. So that's good to know.

If the cold cuts leave the table, you're in trouble. Yeah. For young actors out there, you should know. I don't even see a craft service table. Bro. I'm not here.

Give me the hook made interview. So Freaks and Geeks, it has a short run, but it is a classic, and more importantly, you get to know Judd. in that process. And he gave me great advice.

That was where Judd took me and a couple others aside and said, listen, if you can improv the way you're improvving on this show, you can write. You just need to learn how to do it. So I'm going to teach you how to write. And there was like a bit of an apprenticeship period where literally learned how to write a script. And then as parting words to me were, listen, Jase, you're a weird dude. The only way you're going to make it is if you write your own material. And he was right.

It changed my life. Wow. I wrote for getting Sarah Marshall, like, a year after that. Yeah, so what were, before Sarah Marshall, you're in some big movies, right? You're knocked up. Knocked Up came right before. So here's what I think happened. Freaks and Geeks got canceled.

We did one other show called Undeclared, similar cast. And I believe that Judd went on like a Monte Cristo-style revenge mission to show that Hollywood was wrong and that these kids were good at it. acting. So he systematically started putting us in movies. And he put Seth in 40-year-old Virgin, and then Seth did, knocked up as the lead. And he put the rest of us in as the friends. And after knocked up, he took me to a Laker game, and he said, I think it's, I think it's you're at bad. That's time. Wow. Yeah. You have any ideas? And I said, yeah, I just started writing this thing called for getting Sarah Marshall. And I pitched him the idea at a Laker game, and the next day, basically, contracts,

arrived. And they said, like, go write the script and we'll shoot it next year. That's amazing. Yeah, so I shot that the first hiatus of how I met your mother. So that's a lot of trust, too, because you're still young at that point. I'm a kid. I'm a kid. We're going to put this on you. You write it, star in it. Yeah, I was a young dude. But we had the naivety of youth. Yeah. You know, like, it's funny. I have to remind myself sometimes to be brave enough to write the Dracula puppet musical. because when you're that age, you're like, why wouldn't I end a studio romantic comedy

with a lavish puppet musical? But then as you get older and you understand more, it just seems ludicrous. But I got to remember, like, no, that's what it looks like to be brave. Yes. Because bravery can be replaced by strategy, and it hasn't proven to be a good idea for me. For some people, it's great, but I am a weird dude.

And so the less strategic I am and the more I let ideas be in charge, the better the work seems to be. It's worked out pretty well for you. Yeah. My pace is slower. Like, I've thought about it. My pace is slower. I write something good every three or four years. And that's going to be plenty good.

And forgetting Sarah Marshall was very well received. It's a great movie. That had to be so gratifying because that, in some ways, that was your launch. Like, this is him. This is his thing. Yeah. It was pretty great. But I'll tell you what the best part of it was.

I did not tell my mom that I did full front immunity. And then I brought her to the premiere. No. Yeah. And so this was, to me, going to be the greatest joke any human being has ever pulled on their parents. So sitting next, they're going to be so mad I'm telling this story right now because they love your show. My entire family is watching right now. So anyway, my parents are sitting next to me and all of a sudden the breakup scene happens.

And there I am, fully naked. And the audience is gasping. And I looked to my mom expecting her to be laughing, and she is, like, beat red. She said, why didn't you tell me? I said, I thought it would be a funny joke. She said, this is not a funny joke. And she, like, got up and left the theater for, like, five minutes. And she came back, I think she had been crying in the bathroom.

And then she came back and she watched the rest of the movie. And then she sent an email to my family that said, I would like to inform you that Jason has chosen to do five. full frontal nudity in his upcoming film. However, I assure you, it's not gratuitous and essential to the plot. No way. Oh my God. I hope you framed that email. That is a bravo, mom. That is incredible. Tasteful nudity. Yes. Oh my God. That is amazing. So she walked out, but then she understood why it wanted. Because I actually did get dumped while naked. That is straight from my life. I've heard that. That actually happened. Yeah, yeah. It was great. I won't make you reach.

tell that story, but my God, is it funny. Right, it's morning. After all, it's morning time, right? But the fact that you went in and looked for an outfit a long time, there's so many elements to it. It's great. People could find it somewhere. Stick around for more of my conversation with Jason Siegel right after a quick break. Welcome back now to the rest of my conversation with Jason Siegel. So that obviously does great. And then, as you say, in parallel, you're doing this massive, successful sitcom. So your life is like sitcom movie, sitcom movie.

It's pretty wild, yeah. I would be writing a movie during the, how I met your mother's season and shoot it during the hiatus and then go back and do the next season of the show, showing on for nine years. So it was, yeah, I was tired, for sure. I was tired and young.

And the next thing I took on after forgetting Sarah Marshall was Muppets, which was a lot of pressure, really exciting. But it was, yeah, it was definitely a lot of my my plate. And Muppets did great. Muppets was the best. I mean, what fun, right? I mean, that's dream stuff, isn't it? When you get to the point where you can say, what about a Muppets movie and somebody says yes? Yeah, they're my childhood idols. I actually, like, say this in earnest. It's not like a cute thing. I did not have many friends growing up. I was, I was a weird kid,

and I felt really at home with the Muppets. And my mom had taped every episode of the Muppet show to show me. And I watched them and I fell in love and I felt like that's what I want to do. I want to put on a show. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

I have another fun Muppet story for you. Please. Yeah. So when the Muppets finished, you do these test screenings. My character's name was Gary. And so they showed it to a bunch of kids. It was the cutest thing you ever saw. And they watched the movie.

And then they made them fill out these little forms. And it was like, what did you like most about the movie? They gave me one of the forms. and the kid had written, The Muppets are fun, you know? What's your favorite part of the movie when the Muppets sing songs? What's your least favorite part of the movie?

Gary's Face. Oh, oh. I have that framed on my wall. Yeah, Gary's Face. My mom says that to me when I make fun of her. She just says Gary's face. You got some tough critics, you know? Yeah, from the mouth of babes.

I get it. That's incredible. You know, there are a lot of famous moments of test audience is not liking something that became very good. So you can sleep well. I'm very proud of the Muppets. It was really scary because that's something I care deeply about and I didn't want to mess it up. But we made it from the heart and I think it shows.

I was so interested to read that once how I met your mother ended, again, you're still pretty young. You're in your mid-30s. Yeah, early 30s. Yeah, man. And like, you did it. Like, you made it. You were on one of the biggest shows.

of all time. It's going to be on in syndication forever. Yeah. But you weren't really feeling that way, right? It didn't feel like a victory. You wanted more. Something was missing for me, and I couldn't quite figure out what it was. And I have since, which is, I think that if you are trying to make art, especially if you're writing, part of your responsibility is to be writing stuff that is reflective of what you're thinking about and trying to maybe be processing what you're going through on behalf of an audience so that maybe it helps them process stuff too. Maybe that's the function of art. I don't know. But I think I was working so much that I wasn't really experiencing much life. I wasn't really

processing anything except making stuff. And so I'm starting to repeat my material. I was 33 years old and all of a sudden I had this revelation. Like, why are you still writing things about being scared of girls? Right. You know? You're like a grown man who's doing really well and you're not scared of girls anymore. It was true at 24, 25. Like, forgetting Sarah Marshall is true and that's why you feel that.

But when you try to stretch that and make ever less potent facsimile copies of an idea, it just wasn't satisfying. And I knew I wasn't doing something quite right for me. Yeah. And so I set off to figure out how I could feel good doing this job for the rest of my life. And I think I've gotten there. And I feel like audiences recognize that too. Like, oh, that actor's doing that again.

Yeah. You know, they see it. Yeah, for sure. And of course, like, you know, there's also, I've come to terms with, why are you supposed to know any of this? Like, you know, you figure it out as you go. But yeah, yeah, you feel it. And I want, you don't think I get to make so many of these. As you get older, you start to realize, like, you know what I mean?

Yes. Yeah. Every few years you get to make something. Make them count. But when you're 24, it's infinite. It's going to go on forever. Forever. Yeah.

Was part of your growth in that process getting out of L.A.? As you said, you're living in a small town, sort of north of L.A. Was that helpful to the clearing of your head and thinking about different things? Yeah. Well, I think that one of the things that I started to realize also is that if you live in L.A. And you're doing this job, you're never really leaving campus. Yeah. So there is no in-between period.

Even the most casual go out to dinner or lunch is often in relation to work. And I wanted to make sure that I was thinking about life stuff. And my mother actually was very persistent about telling me, you need to make sure you have a balance between work and life. Because, man, like the engine it requires to make it is so high. You have to be so singularly focused. You have to put your head down. I mean, it's like achieving the impossible every time.

But that's the same throttle you have to kind of switch the other way once you have a chance to breathe and say, like, make sure you're being a human being, too. Or the art's going to be worse. Right, right. You can get in a bubble pretty quickly, can't you? Yeah. Yeah. You can't experience anything. I love what you said. I was reading a different interview. We said something like, in the town where you live when someone says, what are you up to? You can say, I'm going to the post office. It doesn't mean do you have something in development in Hollywood. I was always so sweaty about like, am I doing enough? Do I seem a certain way? Yeah. And now, like, I'm doing the best I can. That's going to be planned. Yeah, right. Isn't that liberating? Is that liberating? though? All that feels good. But we were talking before this interview, I think that that can only come with age. For sure. I sometimes look back and think, oh, man, you should have understood that back then, but you can't. It's just not how it works, right? That's the thing we say,

what would you tell you younger self? Don't worry, it's all going to work out. Well, it's easy to say when you're 50 to the 22-year-old. There's no clue what's coming around the corner. Are we talking yet about a season three of shrinking? Is that, do we feel like that might be down the We are, we are because we're writing it, but I don't know what I don't know what I'm going to say. But it's happening, we think? I think so. Great. Yeah.

I don't know if they've announced it yet. Okay. But I think so. I think the fans will certainly hope that. Yeah. I certainly hope it. It's so crazy because having done nine years of a TV show, I left that experience very, very grateful, but also thinking, like, I don't want to do anything for that extended amount of time ever again because

you're not playing different characters. This show I can picture doing for as long as we can keep it good. Yeah. Because it's very challenging. So what else is out there for you? I mean, you do, as you say, the world is kind of opened up to you. You took a swing here with shrinking that has really worked for you. Are there other things you think about as an artist?

Yes. I just wrote something that I think I'm going to try to make next hiatus. Here I am back in the cycle again. No, but I wrote something that's very relevant about what I think about and what's been going on in my life. over the past 10 years that I think I'll make over the summer, which I'm really excited about. I'm going to Finland tomorrow to go make a like an action adjacent type movie. Incredible. It'd be really fun.

Stunts, the whole thing? The whole thing, stunts and fighting and... Have you rehearsed some of the fights? Yeah, it's interesting because in my own head, I'm like a sweet little guy, you know? But apparently, like, because of my height, which I don't acknowledge, I look like a W.W.E. wrestler when I'm doing fight choreography. So it's going to be a whole new thing. But I think that that's something that's very interesting to me is I like, we all know people in our lives who sit at dinner parties and say things like, well, if I had directed the revenant, the bear

would have been my. Then direct the revenant, you know? And I don't want to be a guy ever who's sitting at a dinner party saying, if I had done that, I want to go find out. Yeah. So, I'm trying to find out all the questions I have. I love that. Yeah. It takes a while to get there, though, doesn't it? Yeah. Open up that wide.

Well, it's very scary to be potentially made fun of. Yeah. I think that that drives a lot of our decisions. It's like, I hope I don't look dumb. Yeah. But luckily, I have a very low sense of pride or shame. That comes in handy, doesn't it? Oh, my God, it's the best.

Well, congratulations, man. It's so fun to talk to you. You too. And mom, he did it. He made it, even with the full frontal. Hey, thanks, man. It's been a real pleasure. Yeah. This is so much fun. Yeah, totally. Thanks, guys. My big thanks again to Jason for a great conversation. You can watch Shrinking on Apple TV Plus, where both season one and two are streaming now.

And my thanks to all of you, as always, for listening again this week. Be sure to click follow so you never. miss an episode if you want to hear all of our conversations with my guest every week. And don't forget to tune in to Sunday today every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.