Michael J. Fox led with braveness when he guest-starred on Shrinking in a job that hit near dwelling.
Jason Segel—who stars as grieving therapist Jimmy Laird on the Apple TV sequence—praised Fox, 64, for his portrayal of a person affected by Parkinson’s illness within the upcoming season 3 premiere, which debuts on January 28 and marks Fox’s first onscreen performing gig since his 2020 stint on The Good Battle.
“Being witness to any of it’s like an unbelievable act of bravery, and to me, the actual definition of artwork,” Segel, 45, instructed TV Insider in an interview printed on Friday, January 16. “To carry out an act of self-exploration so sincere in entrance of the digicam, it’s the final word instance of what you’re making an attempt to do on the market each day [as an actor]. To see it in its most excessive and courageous model is simply awe-inspiring.”
Harrison Ford stars alongside Segel on Shrinking as Paul Rhoades, a fellow therapist who has Parkinson’s illness. For the reason that present started, Segel famous that Fox has “been a continuing level of reference” for Ford’s character on account of his friendship with co-creator Invoice Lawrence.
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“He and Invoice are very shut,” Segel stated of the previous Spin Metropolis collaborators, “and I do know he’s been actually instrumental in shaping that and in addition answering a number of the emotional questions on how he’s felt in the course of the course of.”
Segel, 45, additionally identified his distinctive prior connection to Fox, revealing how he impressed his profession years earlier than they shared the display screen.
“The most important thrill for me, along with simply the bravery of the efficiency and the way cool it’s and all that, I bought to inform him that in my 20s after I was making an attempt to do a TV present and make a film on the similar time, and didn’t know if it was doable when it comes to simply making it by means of, we’d all say to one another, ‘Michael J. Fox did it,’” he recalled.
Fox famously shot Again to the Future and Household Ties on the similar time within the Nineteen Eighties, filming the present within the daytime and spending his nights on the movie. His work ethic made Segel consider he might comply with in his footsteps.
“[For] me and my cohort, this was a man that we pointed to for example of it was doable,” he defined. “I don’t know, with out him blazing a path, that I’d’ve even recognized that I might pull one thing like that off.”
Fox was recognized with Parkinson’s illness in 1991. Greater than three many years later, he shared that he truly approached Lawrence, 57, a few position on Shrinking.
“[I said] ‘You probably did a present about Parkinson’s, and also you didn’t name me?’” Fox recounted to Individuals in October 2025. “And he stated, ‘Oh, you wish to do it?’ And I stated, ‘I’d like to do it.’”
