While Harrison Ford is enjoying showing a funnier side of himself in the Apple TV+ series Shrinking, it’s not the only reason he was drawn to the project.
“Oh man, I get out of it essential human contact,” the actor, 82, recently told Vanity Fair. “I get to imagine with people that have great skill and experience…. It’s fun to work with these people.”
Shrinking, co-created by Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel and Brett Goldstein, follows Jimmy (Segel), a grieving therapist, who starts to tell his clients exactly what he thinks, ignoring his training and ethics. Ford plays Dr. Paul Rhoades, the head of a cognitive behavioral therapy practice and Jimmy’s colleague.
And while Ford is known for his more series roles as Han Solo in the Star Wars franchise and Indiana Jones in the Indiana Jones franchise, he admitted he’s a “silly person” at heart. The actor also believes there’s a sense of humor in every project.
“In a way, yes, because the jokes really are the surprise in everything, in a serious movie or in a streaming comedy,” he explained. “Finding the humor in the moment is what makes it survivable for us most of the time. I do like to invest characters that I play with their own personal sense of humor. I think everybody has one, even if they’re not funny.”
Ford said he especially loves to be in the company of other people “that are having fun,” which made Shrinking the perfect project for the actor as a down-to-earth comedy. “I don’t like to get too serious,” he added.
“I always enjoyed humor. I loved jokes. I loved the construction of jokes. My father was a joke teller. The wordsmithing and the ideas that lay behind a joke have always interested me,” Ford explained. “When I was thinking about becoming an actor, I was ambitious for both kinds of work — serious drama and comedy. I found myself doing both and not really distinguishing much between them. I think I think with the same actor’s head about a joke as I do about a serious or emotional scene.”
Season two of Shrinking premieres on Apple TV+ on Oct. 16.
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