Best Of: Jason Segel / Lisa Kudrow

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**Tonya Mosley** (0:15)
From WHOY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tonya Mosley in Los Angeles. Today, Jason Segel. In the comedy drama series Shrinking, he plays a psychotherapist who's having a nervous breakdown, but is continuing to see patients.
Segel talks about what he's learned about psychotherapy and himself playing a therapist.
Also, Lisa Kudrow.
She's nominated for two Emmy Awards for the final season of the HBO comedy, The Comeback, which she co-created. Lisa is best known as Phoebe on Friends. But long before that, she was performing as a kid for the people around her.

**Lisa Kudrow** (0:53)
I imitated Lily Tomlin, Edith Ann, that character on Laughing. I'd go to slumber parties and to me, it was like doing a show and then lip sync songs and then have everyone do it. I was like a cruise director.

**Tonya Mosley** (1:06)
Book critic Maureen Corrigan has a late summer gift for us, three new suspense novels. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.

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**Tonya Mosley** (2:33)
This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tonya Mosley. Terry has our first interview. Here she is.

**Terry Gross** (2:38)
My guest Jason Segel is nominated for an Emmy for his leading role in the series Shrinking. The first three seasons are streaming on Apple TV.
When we first meet his character Jimmy, he's a psychotherapist who's having a nervous breakdown, but continues to work with his patients. Believing he's having a breakthrough as a therapist, he intervenes in his patients' lives. He gives them inappropriate advice to do things Jimmy believes will change their lives for the better and prevent them from complaining about the same things week after week, without ever making an effort to fix the problems. The reason Jimmy is falling apart is that his wife was killed in a car accident a year ago.
His teenage daughter is in high school when the series starts. She accuses him of being so absorbed in his own grief, he's emotionally abandoned her instead of helping her through her grief. Jimmy's mentor and colleague is played by Harrison Ford, who's also nominated for an Emmy, as is co-star Jessica Williams.
Segel got his first memorable role in Freaks and Geeks. The characters were high school friends. After the show was canceled, Segel wrote and starred in the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall. He wrote and was the human star of the movie musical The Muppets. He was one of the stars of How I Met Your Mother, played writer David Foster Wallace in the film The End of the Tour, and wrote and starred in the series Dispatches from Elsewhere. Let's start with a scene from the first episode of Shrinking. It will give you an idea of how Segel's character has lost his bearings as a therapist and is pushing his patients to do what he thinks they need to do to move forward. Here he is with his patient, Grace, played by Heidi Gardner.

**SPEAKER_6** (4:19)
You just kept on going on and on about how dumb I am.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:22)
You're not dumb, Grace.

**SPEAKER_6** (4:24)
He said if it weren't for my great s***, no one would want to take care of me, so that's almost nice.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:28)
It's not nice.

**SPEAKER_6** (4:29)
I know, but he loves me.

**Jason Segel** (4:34)
Grace, we've been doing this for two years.
Two years of your life. I have never seen a guy tell a woman that she is dumb and lucky she has great s*** and thought to myself, wow, they must really be in love. And he keep telling me how great he is. Well, I saw him. He's not that great. His muscles are too big. His shirts are too tight. Nobody likes that. It's gross.