'Shrinking' star Jason Segel isn't afraid to share the 'dirty underneath'

Actor Jason Segel admits to being a compulsive worrier. "There is an impending sense of doom that I have been trying to negotiate with my whole life," he says.

As a kid, Segel was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. He says he battled night terrors that morphed into "compulsively checking doorknobs." But over time, he found ways to channel his anxiety into creativity.

"Creativity has been a really good friend," he says. "It's been my beloved since I [was] young, until I met my partner. Like, me and creativity were ride or die."

In the Apple TV series Shrinking, Segel plays Jimmy, a psychotherapist who suffers a nervous breakdown in the wake of his wife's death. Jimmy's frustrated that his patients continuously complain about the same things and seem incapable of change, so he begins to give them very blunt advice.

"Therapists who have come up to me about it have almost unanimously said that it is wish fulfillment for [them]," Segel says. "I think that therapists love the idea of being able to just say like, 'Oh my God, just leave him.'"

Segel draws on his own experiences in therapy — as well as a willingness to be "very vulnerable" in his roles: "I'm devoid of pride or shame about the dirty underneath," he says. "I'm kind of willing to express it in life and on my face, creatively. I'll just say the stuff that a lot of people are trying to hide."

Segel is nominated for an Emmy for his role on Shrinking. He previously wrote and starred in the hit comedy film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and played David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour.

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Interview highlights

On how his own therapy informs Shrinking

[In] the last lines of this season that we just ... aired, Season 3, Jimmy finally gets to the dirty underneath of why he can't move forward, this idea of who would want me now? I'm all covered in scars. That came from a real therapy session I had ... where I had to show up to this thing where I was going to be around somebody who I had kind of come up with. And I've had a twisty turny life and some rocky moments, and this guy I was gonna see had just worn it all a lot more lightly than I had. And I was talking to my therapist ... about it and I said, "You know, I think I feel a little bit embarrassed. I feel embarrassed to walk into this room and ... I'm showing up covered in scars." And without missing a beat, he said, "What a shame it would be to show up anywhere at 45 years old, not covered in scars." … I got off the phone with my therapist. I called the writer's room and I said, "Guys, this is how this ends."

That moment released so much personal, whatever you would call it — shame, embarrassment — about [the fact] that I've lived a complicated life. And then that's the beauty of Shrinking, is [that it is] a place where we are making art, where that can go right in. ... I've had a lot of people come up and say, like, "That thing about scars really stuck with me. It's a sign of a life fully lived."

On his Shrinking character starting out as unlikeable 

I have garnered a lot of goodwill over my career, and people are rooting for the characters I play. [My thought was] let's push this guy as far as we can into the red, because I feel I can pull him out of the nosedive, so let's be brave. I think it's the opening scene of the show, in my backyard with sex workers and booze and drugs and my daughter is upstairs. Like, it is a pretty unlikable first depiction, because I felt like if you start this guy at the rockiest of rock bottoms you have a long way to go to pull him out, and I just believed I could make you feel sympathetic for him.

On redefining for himself what makes a good performance, and preparing for Season 3's emotional final scene with Harrison Ford  

I came up thinking [that] you found out if you did good on opening weekend based on the gross, you know? That was kind of the era that I came up in. And The End of The Tour was the time where I gave a performance ... [and] I felt this other feeling. I had prepped so hard, I had kind of been brave, because I didn't know if I was gonna be good enough at it. And when they said, "that's a wrap," I had this thought like, I did it. And this whole movie could be out of focus and that wouldn't change that I did it. And I had never had that feeling before.

I think the whole season [of Shrinking] I was thinking to myself, boy, when we get to the end of this season, I'm gonna be on a balcony with Harrison Ford, acting my guts out, and it's really important to me that I be great. It's like you're gonna play basketball with Michael Jordan or something. And man, when that scene came, I was not afraid and I just was honest. I didn't show off and I did all the things that I feel like make a scene good. And at the end, when they said, "cut," Harrison looked at me and he said, so excited, "You did it kid!" And we hugged and I didn't need to add any other like judgment to that moment.

On resisting the urge to show off for the camera 

I try really hard not to show off. I think that's one of the things that you learn as you're getting more familiar with working with a camera. … Boy, you wanna show off, like the camera's getting ever closer to you as the coverage goes on, you know? So some parts of you are activating like, "Oh, gosh, it's my turn," or, "Oh, it's getting closer. Now's the time to really show them."

I was really interested in why I thought Jeff Bridges was so good at acting. ... So I went back and I read reviews of some of his great performances, and one of them said "Jeff Bridges may be the least self-conscious actor working today." And I thought, "Oh yeah, that's the goal, is to be as unselfconscious between action and cut as possible." Just don't show off. Don't try to show them. Just be real. How honest can you be between action and cut?

On two movies that have inspired him 

Broadcast News I watch a lot, because I just think it's perfectly written. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is based on Broadcast News, structurally. The thing that I loved about Broadcast News was that in any other movie one of those guys would end up being bad, and the choice would become clear. But that movie is like life: It's complicated. They're both flawed, they're both great, you know? … And I tried to do that in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, where no one is a villain. Like, everyone is flawed, everyone is great, everyone could end up with anyone else in the movie.

Life is funny and complicated and weird. Harold and Maude, to me, is like a bullseye of the tone that I feel inside, which I call "magical melancholy." It's like, God, there is so much love and there is so much beauty and it also can be taken away from you, and it's like one step out of reach, you know? That feeling is really like the tone I resonate in. It's the same kind of music I like, like Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, that album. It's about love and beauty, but it's tinged with sadness. Like, it's one step removed from being able to touch it.

Ann Marie Baldonado and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Clare Lombardo adapted it for the web.

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