HOW DO YOU follow a show like the lauded Ted Lasso? You make something that’s the exact opposite. That was the goal when Jason Segel teamed up with the show’s writers and creators, Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein, for their new project.
Well, not exactly the opposite, but Shrinking, the Apple TV+ show Segel co-writes and stars in, features — instead of Lasso’s wholesome, biscuit-baking football coach — abinge-drinking, grief-stricken therapist who just can’t catch a break. “Ted Lasso felt like exactly what we needed at the time, because we were deep in the thick of it and we needed a shot of hope,” Segel says of the show’s timely mid-pandemic appeal. “But we’re a little bit after that now, where we’re grieving the last few years in a lot of ways — whether it was an actual loved one or just the years of our lives that were hijacked.”