Jason Segel is not afraid of the ‘dirty underneath’

**Terry Gross** (0:00)
This is Fresh Air, I am Terry Gross. 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 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 the 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.
You just kept on going on and on about how dumb I am.

**Jason Segel** (1:46)
You're not dumb, Grace.

**Terry Gross** (1:47)
He said if it weren't for my great, no one would want to take care of me. So, that's almost nice.

**Jason Segel** (1:52)
It's not nice.

**Jason Segel** (1:53)
I know, but he loves me. Enough.

**Jason Segel** (1:57)
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 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.

**Terry Gross** (2:16)
I am sorry. I don't know what's happening because I was talking and...

**Jason Segel** (2:20)
Grace, your husband is emotionally abusive. He's not working on it. He doesn't intend to.
He's made you think it's all you deserve.

**Jason Segel** (2:27)
It's not.

**Jason Segel** (2:29)
Just f***ing leave him.

**Jason Segel** (2:32)
It's not that easy.

**Jason Segel** (2:34)
It is that easy. You don't have any kids. Just go to your sister's in Vancouver.

**Terry Gross** (2:41)
But then...

**Jason Segel** (2:42)
Leave him or I'm done being your therapist.

**Terry Gross** (2:56)
Okay.
Jason Segel, welcome back to Fresh Air and congratulations on the Emmy nomination and on the series. So I should say the outcome does not go well.

**Jason Segel** (3:09)
It depends on how you look at it. It's good to talk to you again, by the way. I was just saying to you in our little pre-interview session, you're one of my very first interviews when I was a little guy, I mean, in my early 20s, and it's so nice to be talking to you again.

**Terry Gross** (3:22)
Oh, it's a pleasure to have you back. We also talked about the Muppets movie and that was a lot of fun.

**Jason Segel** (3:26)
Yeah, that's right. Love that film.

**Terry Gross** (3:28)
First of all, what should Jimmy have done? What do you think?

**Jason Segel** (3:32)
Well, it's an interesting thing because this is the extreme example of this kind of therapy method the show is based on, this group of therapists who kind of broke convention and realized that people were spending a lot of time week after week rehashing where things came from in their past.
In reality, what they really needed was some hope about what to do on Tuesday. It's like I have to have this talk with my boss on Tuesday and I have all these feelings about it and you're spending week after week figuring out why you have feelings about authority figures, but Tuesday is coming. This group of therapists decided that they were going to change the rules a bit, tell people what to do on Tuesday and then in the meantime, we will get to figuring out why you had such a hard time figuring it out. This is the beginning of that approach to therapy that we see as the show progresses, of people really just want to be told what to do to some extent. We can figure out the why of it all, but what am I supposed to do about my abusive husband? What am I supposed to do about my work situation?