The third season of Shrinking started on Jan. 28. I started watching it midway through the first season because of Harrison Ford. I was intrigued by the premise, but when I got to the scene where Derek tells Pam to “eat a d-ck” (IYKYK), I was all in. It’s a good show, but Shrinking’s strength is in its incredible ensemble and the enormous amounts of chemistry they have while dealing with some pretty heavy topics.

Jason Segel did an interview with Variety recently. Much of it focused on how Jason has matured as both a person and an actor, but there are a few gems in regard to some of his older roles, including some of his memorable moments from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and How I Met Your Mother.

On Jeff Daniels playing his dad in Shrinking season 4: “That was the most brilliant casting for my dad. Because, we’re doing very similar stuff. There were moments where in my head I was gonna try to mimic his movements. So I was kind of spying on him during scenes, and I realized we’re already doing the same thing… He’s one of those guys like Peter Sellers, who can’t really be put into a box. You can do drama, you can do comedy. And guys like Jeff Daniels kind of broke my brain open about not letting yourself be limited about the kind of material you can do.”

Growing as an actor: “I really thought my 20s were my prime … And then in my 30s, I had a little sense of mourning, like, the best part happened. And then my 40s have arrived, and I’m like a grown adult who’s learned all the lessons from his 20s — and now, all of a sudden, the parts are richer. They’re like man parts of people who have life experience. On ‘Shrinking,’ [his character, Jimmy] has gone through the biggest tragedy you can go through. And I’m like, ‘Oh, my 20s were rehearsal. And now I get to play parts where you get to really express something.’”

Learning from Harrison Ford: “[Harrison Ford’s speech in the season 2 finale is] the best acting I’ve ever seen, certainly in person, sitting there watching him give this monologue. It was sort of the bullseye of my ethos about what art is, which is somebody performing an act of self exploration for an audience. Everything he’s saying in that speech is a 1:1 ratio for what I’m sure you’re thinking about at 83 years old, at the end of any career. ‘I don’t know how much longer I get to do this, what an honor it is to get to do it with all of you. How much this career has meant to me’ and all that. You’re watching him just say these words, and we’re all crying disproportionate to the occasion — like it’s not totally right for the scene — but it works.”

Learning from his heroes: “[In my 30s,] I was trying to figure out how I wanted to do the rest of this job. I was looking ahead like, ‘Man, you have 50 years left of this, if you’re lucky. What are you going to do with it? And I realized that surrounding myself, just getting near people I admired who seemed to have a better idea about why we’re doing this stuff than I do, and asking them a ton of questions, was going to be like the mentorship of a lifetime. Like, I have a chance to be an apprentice over and over again with people I admire.”

He still performs with the Dracula puppet from Sarah Marshall: “I perform it every once in a while, I do secret performances of the Dracula puppet musical around town. I did one at Hotel Cafe last year. I would like to do one soon at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater.”

Would he do a HIMYM reunion? “That show changed my life, I would do anything they asked me to do. I think they did so many flash forwards on that show, though. I always loved that Marshall was kind of an enigma, because he could become a Supreme Court justice, but he also could lose a tuna sandwich and spend an episode just like looking for a sandwich.”

[From Variety]

I haven’t seen Forgetting Sarah Marshall in probably 15 years. I don’t know if it still holds up, but I remember the Dracula puppet musical, “A Taste for Love,” being cringey and hysterical. There’s actually a whole story/lure behind it that goes beyond the movie. Can you imagine going to see a random Dracula puppet show at an LA theater and later learning that it was Jason Segel himself? I love when actors decide to not take themselves so seriously and do sh-t like this.

Clearly, Jason does take himself and his career seriously, puppets and all. I like that he woke up one day, midway through his career, and decided that he wanted to use his remaining time and connections to get better as an actor. It’s not really any different than those of us normies that decide to go back to school to better ourselves and our career. Jeff Daniels is also a great choice to play Jimmy’s dad. Not only do they have similar physical features, they have similar mannerisms and on-screen personas. I can totally buy it and can’t wait to see how it plays out this season.

Here are Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis and Bill Hader on Total Request Live in 2008:
Embed from Getty Images

Here’s a clip of an interview he did with GQ. It’s captioned “Jason Segel talks through how his lavish dracula puppet musical made a cameo in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by GQ (@gq)

Photos credit: Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon, Getty Images, Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon