BILL LAWRENCE: One of the coolest things about being a storyteller is maybe in some way writing the relationships as you wish they would be, the things I wish I could say, and the relationships I wish I had. I’m always trying to unpack that.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Welcome to Season 2 of We Disrupt This Broadcast. It is so good to be back. That’s right. Our disrupting was disrupted for a short hiatus, but we’re back in business now. I’m your host, Gabe González, and I am so excited to be back alongside the folks at the Peabody Awards and the Center for Media and Social Impact to bring you all a brand new season of interviews with some of the geniuses behind our favorite entertainment and creative work, as well as the activists, academics, and so many more insightful people who can take us deep into why this work is impactful.
Today, we’re speaking to two creatives whose work focuses on disrupting old narratives. about masculinity.
Insular, brooding, strong. That’s what we’re familiar with when we think about masculinity, right? But what about vulnerable, open, and in therapy? Well, we’re going to talk about that today. First up, we’ve got Bill Lawrence.
Now, we all know that shows like Scrubs and Ted Lasso have made Bill Lawrence famous for creating hilarious and memorable sitcoms with heart. What we find particularly interesting and unique about Bill’s body of work is how he allows his male characters to navigate the relationships and emotions with candor, sensitivity, and vulnerability.
Something you might dare to call positive masculinity. Sure, let’s coin that. We’ll also hear from Brett Goldstein of Ted Lasso fame, who teamed up with Bill Lawrence and Jason Segal to create Shrinking, a show that focuses on one man’s grieving process in the wake of his wife’s death. In addition to grief, Shrinking highlights the value of therapy, the complexity of relationships, and the wild journey of parenthood.
So when we come back, the Peabody’s executive director, Jeffrey Jones, bros out, but in a healthy way, with Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein, the two men behind Ted Lasso and Shrinking. Shows that are shining a spotlight on men and their very complicated emotions.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Welcome back! Today we are joined by We Disrupt This Broadcast executive producer as well as the executive director of the Peabody Awards, Jeffrey Jones. He’s in conversation today with Bill Lawrence. The two of them talk about Bill’s legendary body of work and his latest show, Shrinking. This emotional comedy follows the life and relationships of Jimmy Laird, a grieving therapist trying to get his life on track after the tragic and sudden death of his wife. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy hanging out with Bill and Jeff.
JEFFREY JONES: Welcome to We Disrupt This Broadcast, Bill. So good to have you.
BILL LAWRENCE: Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate it.
JEFFREY JONES: What really fascinates us is your alternative small screen portrayals of masculinity with sensitive men fully embodying kindness and goodness, men not afraid of therapy, men who are vulnerable, who need and want community. So in Ted Lasso, Shrinking and even in Scrubs, what inspired you to tell these types of stories about masculinity and male friendships in these ways?
BILL LAWRENCE: It’s a great question, man. It’s fun to talk about stuff like this. It’s twofold. First and foremost, I think it’s so silly not to acknowledge that we’re all a product of our own references.
And the thing that made me want to be a storyteller when I was a kid, I gravitated to shows like M.A.S.H., okay, or The Wonder Years. Shows that were still funny, but could pull me into, you know, an emotional kind of pathos of people being open and honest and sensitive, you know, about what they were really feeling.
And they could still have jerky moments, but they could also have hugely vulnerable moments. And I’m a schmuck. I’m a guy that covets heart. And so in all my work, I think one of the interesting things is finding your voice and then acknowledging it in a grateful way, right? I embrace my voice and I find it very mentally and professionally healthy for me to go, I generally like shows that leave me with some optimism and some hopefulness, not only as a storyteller, but as a human being and a fan. So that’s part of it.
And then the other part of it. It is self referential. I’m fairly consistently not great at writing things that aren’t part of my own personal life. The dirty secret that everybody on Scrubs knew was that Zach Braff and Donald Faison were me and a guy named Randall Winston. He was the producer of the show with me. He’s now the director producer of Shrinking. He and this is only for the benefit of the story, is a African American gay gentleman. The only thing we switched is I’m Turk, I’m the jockey guy that is getting better at saying his feelings. And Shrinking is the same as a father and daughter dynamic that is straight from my life. It’s no secret that my biggest mentor, Michael J. Fox had Parkinson’s and that my father struggles with the Lewy Bodies Parkinson’s.
And it’s no secret that almost every one of my shows has a mentorship aspect, which was a huge part of Ted Lasso, which was, you know, the benevolence, male or female of, you know, a mentor that’s looking to look outside himself and help someone. So it is thematically through my shows for a reason, and it is my favorite thing to write about because they feel very authentic to me.
JEFFREY JONES: Yeah, especially with your show Shrinking, where the characters are navigating these various complicated relationships in their lives, you can really see how the writing has to come from a very personal place. So thinking about Lasso, there’s an American journalist named Bill Buford who wrote a book called Among the Thugs about violence and hooliganism in British football. And you take a show where you just walk right into one of the more masculine universes I can think about with this character of goodness. I guess I’m interested, do you think, was there any pushback on that?
BILL LAWRENCE: Yeah, you know, it’s a very astute question. And by the way, I always have to start to make sure, especially with Ted Lasso that I give Jason Sudeikis props too.
JEFFREY JONES: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
BILL LAWRENCE: Because you know, he truly wanted to demystify kind of the sports world. I’m going to give you a weird metaphor that we did. Hollywood understandably has a toxic reputation in some aspects. People are aware of bigger than life figures that have behaved horribly, and the cliche of you know, the awful producer or the ridiculously sleazy actor, or, you know, the, it just, they exist for a reason. But the B side of it is very few men or women have gotten into Hollywood without the benevolent mentorship of someone else. And those stories are prevalent as well, they just aren’t as often told.
And we talked about that metaphor in terms of sports as well. Popular culture, both idealizes athletes and at the same time, takes great delight in letting us all know the scandals and the darkness and the male toxicity in those environments, but you don’t have to search too much in real life to see kind of uplifting, optimistic, and hopeful stories under those same umbrellas. They just aren’t as titillating. So we definitely talked about it as a fun world to try and demysticize. The only question is, is it too much of a optimistic fantasy? You know, or do people buy into it? So that’s definitely something we were concerned with writing the show.
JEFFREY JONES: Since nobody wanted season three to be the last, I think we all bought into it. Let me ask a little more about masculinity. So, you know, you and I, you and I are guys of a particular age where our generation of men had to have this reckoning with the masculinity norms we grew up with, including parenting and fathering and having to break cycles of toxic masculinity, sexist and misogynist thinking, and even narcissistic parenting via new or different ways of being masculine. So big question here really to dig in: What is healthy masculinity to you?
BILL LAWRENCE: To me, because I obsess about it a lot, it is all about moving forward. And what I mean about that is it’d be easy for me to list what I think healthy masculinity is: a lack of misogyny, a willingness to make yourself vulnerable and to admit fault, not being afraid of exposing your feelings.
But we just wrote something in Shrinking that was literally about this topic. And it was, we’re all a product of the time, era, environment, situation we grew up in. And I don’t worry about people, even if it’s at different paces, that are moving the right direction, you know, that as men or as characters are progressing and growing. The people I worried about no matter where their starting place is, the ones that are stuck, you know, and are not open to the idea of maybe I could do this better, or maybe I could be more open here.
And so, you know, that’s kind of a repetitive theme in a lot of the shows I do, which is, I think the best kind of masculinity starts with the ability to recognize what your issue and problem is and be trying to tackle it with success and failure. But at least with the feeling for me, because I am an optimist and a hopeful person that you are making progress.
And I think that the characters that people link onto the most, you feel, even if it might be too slow sometimes or might be painful, that they’re making progress. You feel that Ted, you know, is getting through his mental health issues or finding a way. You feel that Jason Segel’s character is getting over his grief and making amends to the horrible parenting he did.
I think that progress is kind of what defines healthy masculinity for me. And so for me, the definition of positive masculinity is the ability to shine a light on your own shortcomings and at the very least, try to move forward past them.
JEFFREY JONES: And to that point, we see those efforts of men moving forward in Shrinking, particularly with Jason Siegel’s character, Jimmy, and how he’s trying to mend his relationship with his daughter, Alice. Let’s take a listen to a clip from the show.
CLIP: Shrinking
I don’t know, Dad. I’m just saying I’m scared you’re gonna fall apart again. After Mom died, one day you were my dad and the next, I was getting a ride to school from a sex worker.
She was also a Lyft driver. She did both. Look, you don’t have to worry about that anymore. I’m good.
Are you sure? Because that’s what you always said back then. I’d ask you how your day went and you’d be like, It was good. It was great.
And it wasn’t good. It was fucked up.
Yeah.
Man, I think it is so brave that you’re being this honest with me. Yes, I am stressed out about Grace. But that’s work day, Dad. Nighttime Daddy is fine. I heard it. I’m not going to say it again.
Thank you.
Point is, I can handle it now. I’m in a much better place.
JEFFREY JONES: It’s not just the men though. And I want to talk about your strong female characters. In Ted Lasso, obviously Rebecca and in particular Keeley, who is instrumental to the kind of masculine detoxification, if you will, of Roy Kent. But in Shrinking the female characters are even more central in pushing the men to be better.
Certainly Gabby played by Jessica Williams with everyone, but also think about Liz, Krista Miller, barging into Paul’s office to demand better of him and recommending Gabby for a professorship position. And my partner recently said, she saw a quote that said, “the feminist movement forgot to teach men how to live with empowered women.” And so I guess my question to you is Shrinking actually doing just that?
BILL LAWRENCE: Look, I hope so. I think it’d be too self aggrandizing to say that we’re necessarily accomplishing it, you know, but I can say this, my life changed as a storyteller when I fell in love with an empowered woman and a very independent woman. And I would be lying to you if I said I was wearing an item of clothing that I picked out for myself right now. You know what I mean?
JEFFREY JONES: Ditto, this is her favorite shirt.
BILL LAWRENCE: There you go, right? And as a young man who grew up without a lot of girl friends, you know, people that were just in my world, it was eye opening to me at a very young age to not only see the independence and empowerment of a real human being, but also having to look at myself. And as my writing as a younger guy, it was, without a doubt, some of the female characters when I started out were ciphers, you know, and weren’t necessarily going on their own journeys. And so me, I take great pride not only in having crazy strong female voices on our shows, but in making sure that the female characters demand as much of the men in their life as they do of each other, A, and B, you know that they have their own journeys that are independent of however better they want the guys to be as people.
JEFFREY JONES: Yeah. And that really is a disruption Bill, which is again, to celebrate your work of the norms of women in their role with men in traditional television narratives.
So let me ask you this, one of the hottest topics in therapy these days is childhood trauma, and a lot of your characters have daddy issues. So unless there are Vegas rules here, tell me about the discussions over this in the writer’s room. Is there real intentionality in a show about therapy to deal with daddy issues or childhood trauma?
BILL LAWRENCE: Part of my adult life that translates very directly into stuff I write is about found family. A lot of these shows you could argue Instead of me writing a family comedy are the family we find for ourself once we leave the nest. And to repeat those kind of complicated dynamics that we all grew up with.
I love my dad and so I’m not being disparaging but I made a joke that you know this is Hollywood, and the president of Warner Brothers Studios is a guy named Peter Roth for a while. And within the first year of working here, I had hugged Peter Roth more than I ever hugged my father.
JEFFREY JONES: Peter’s a lovable guy so I can see that too.
BILL LAWRENCE: He’s a lovable guy. Well, yeah, he demands it, and it was not being offered up by me, you know, my, my actual name is William Van Duzer Lawrence IV, you know what I mean? And so one of the coolest things about being a storyteller is maybe in some way writing the relationships as you wish they would be, the things I wish I could say, and the relationships I wish I had.
I’m always trying to unpack that. I have a really complicated relationship with my daughter that I both love and I’m constantly perplexed by. And I think it could feel disruptive to under this umbrella is, I’m always amazed when I get to talk about Shrinking in that I grew up as a network television guy.
And so I’m a dinosaur a little bit. And the amazing appeal of writing these stories that kind of stem from that trauma is as comedy writers, it didn’t used to be an option to us. And I often do a comedy bit in the room about what it would have been like pitching Shrinking back in the days when I was doing Spin City and Scrubs, I would have had to walk into the network president and go: I got an idea for a super funny comedy.
This dude’s wife died, and he’s doing a lot of drugs and hanging out with sex workers. And he’s the worst father of all time. And in the pilot episode, he has one patient ‘cause he’s a horrible therapist, a young African American kid. And he gets that kid in a massive fight and thrown in jail. But I think it’s going to be really fun.
They would, I would not have even gotten a second meeting much less, you know what I mean, been able to make the show. And so I think one of the reasons you’re seeing shows like this is that there’s people that came from a drama world where you weren’t allowed to be funny. And there’s people in a comedy world that are filled with their own version of pain and backstory that this was not an avenue open to us.
And now, kind of what defines these genres has changed. You know what I mean? And so I think, yeah, it’s not surprising in a therapy show that you’re talking about childhood trauma, but it’s also not surprising in the world of comedy right now, a lot of these shows are coming from a place of tremendous pain before they get to the funny. And it’s what appeals to me about comedy.
JEFFREY JONES: It’s what the beauty though of this moment. It is a story in the trades today comparing Shrinking and Somebody Somewhere, which is also, won a Peabody award. Let’s talk about, you’ve got three generations of men in this show in various ways, engaged in therapy. Yet, you know, the way these three men are all engaged with and helping each other fascinates me. So my question is, what do you think we as a society have to learn from intergenerational friendships and communities, men in particular?
BILL LAWRENCE: We generally have a real hard time understanding what someone else’s frame of reference is. I mean, look culturally right now, in a comedy room, we’re randomly talking about the fact that I’m a very open and quite outspoken liberal person.
I went and saw Blazing Saddles when I was a kid, two or three times. Great Mel Brooks movie. I think if somebody put that out there now, or if I made the mistake of telling someone’s teenager, you got to see this movie, it’s real funny. I think his parents in the frame of reference of time now would come and want to murder me. Right?
I think that there’s so much value to understanding that we are all a product of the world, the time and the zeitgeist that we have come from. And to acknowledge that, you know, is not only kind of a way to be healthier yourself, but it’s a way to find a way in, you know, to connect with somebody.
I’m closer to my dad than I ever was when we were younger. And hearing what his life was like, you know, and how he grew up closer to a nanny than his parents. And my father’s grandfather’s home was the administration building of Sarah Lawrence College. It’s a very upper crust… And by the other toe where’s my comedy come from? My mom is the first one in their family to ever go to college. And all of her brothers and sisters are large mouth bass fishing guides on the St. John’s River in central Florida. Do you know what I mean?
And to hear that and go, Oh shit. You know, she was dropped into that weird world, and that’s the push and pull I’ve seen my whole life between a woman that wishes that we are all more open and vulnerable emotionally and a guy that has trouble, you know, saying I love you if there’s other people around.
And I also think that it kind of gives you the ability to forgive yourself cause sometimes we’re just doing the best we can, you know, under the rules we’ve been given, you know.
JEFFREY JONES: The Harrison Ford character, Paul, is exactly that. And I liked that you’re not trying to script him any other way. And he’s a smart guy and a therapist. He’s trying to do better, but he’s very much a product of his environment.
BILL LAWRENCE: Without a doubt, you know, he’s loosely based on a guy named Phil Stutz, this therapist who has Parkinson’s, and he wrote a best selling book called The Tools, and he is very much a man of the people, blue collar guy, and what I’ve always found so fascinating about him, he without a doubt, says, you know, some of my insight into my own limitations is I think what’s made me be very good at what I do. And so that’s kind of what we’re looking at with Paul.
JEFFREY JONES: What does your therapist think of the show?
BILL LAWRENCE: Huh? You know what, man? I liked that you knew I had a shrink. It’s Hollywood. We all have shrinks. I was a long time coming to it, man. You know, my wife was casually hinting for like 15 years of like, I don’t know, maybe you want to talk to someone.
And I didn’t realize she was going, please. Please talk to anybody. So look in a good way. We’ve been embraced by the therapy community out here because much like Scrubs, right? Scrubs, was all that real? No. But did some doctors feel like we were capturing, you know, the frustration of the system? I think what one of the things that we’ve tapped into in a good way is therapists recognizing in and of themselves what frustrates them the most.
They’re wish fulfillment of what they wish they could say because we often do it, you know. And I think people know it’s a work of fiction, but what’s so funny about the immediate reaction, more often than not, the people that are upset by the way we treat therapy are not therapists, but they’re just TV fans who will say like the first year we got so much social media traffic of going, “if any, um, therapist did what Jason Siegel’s character, Jimmy is doing there’d be huge consequences!” And I wanted to just be like, yeah, we know, just watch the finale. You know what I mean? That’s storytelling. He’s making a mistake. So they’ve been very kind to us and have been offering up stories as we’ve moved forward.
JEFFREY JONES: Bill, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been great to have this conversation with you, and best of luck.
BILL LAWRENCE: Hey, thank you so much. So fun. I really appreciate it.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Well, now that we’ve heard from one of the brains behind Shrinking, it is time to expand our minds. When we come back, Jeff will chat with Brett Goldstein, one of the co creators of Shrinking. He’s also the actor and writer who played Roy Kent, the gruff and lovable footballer with a heart of gold, on the critically acclaimed show Ted Lasso. Don’t go anywhere.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Welcome back, everybody. Thanks for sticking around. I know it feels like I should have followed a Better Help ad here, but we couldn’t quite make it come together. Next up, Jeff Jones sits down with Brett Goldstein, who, along with Bill Lawrence and Jason Segel, created the show Shrinking. You may also know Brett as Roy Kent, the tough but loving and, let’s say it very lovable, soccer star on the Peabody award winning show Ted Lasso. Let’s take a listen.
JEFFREY JONES: Welcome to We Disrupt This Broadcast, Brett. Thank you for being with us.
BRETT GOLDSTEIN: Thank you for having me. I’m delighted to be here.
JEFFREY JONES: So the theme of our show is the disruption of traditional television narratives in the streaming era. And you, of course, have been a writer, producer, and actor on two seminal shows that have offered nothing short of disruption of traditional portrayals of masculinity on television.
Let’s talk about your character, Roy Kent. You know, in Ted Lasso, Roy is a famous British footballer whose career is ending, but he’s also this ultimate masculine hero in that his value is tied to his public performance in the world of sport. He’s rage and anger forward, emotionally shut off from warmth and humor, at least initially. He gets the pretty girl. Yet, we watch this character evolve. But tell us how you and the writers saw this evolution of Roy Kent.
BRETT GOLDSTEIN: In the story we’re telling, there’s like different phases of manhood. You know, you have Sam Obisanya, who is like at the beginning, he’s this young up and comer. And you have Jamie, who is on the cusp of being a huge deal. And you have Roy who is on the way down.
But it was also, I think the way me and Jason had always talked about it is like, he has no plan. I grew up with footballers, and there’s something sort of tragic about that life. And I think it applies to lots of athletes that you are in this cocoon from a child, from like six years old, some of these kids playing football. And they’re raised in this environment and they get fame and they get money and they get success and they, but they’re in this world that isn’t the real world. There’s a lot of things kind of kept from them. And then at a certain age in their thirties usually, that suddenly ends and they have no skills.
They have no life skills. They don’t know how to be a person because they’ve been raised in a very closed off and specific way. And so I think Roy is at the beginning profoundly depressed, really. I think he’s like, I’m going to be finishing my career at this middle club with a stupid manager. And it’s like a sad ending to his career.
So in the beginning he is stoic, but I think his stoicism comes from, life is really shit. And in a couple of years, I’m going to be nothing. And I think his plan was always play football till you die. And I think secretly he hopes he’ll die. I think, you know, there’ll be some life threatening injury and he doesn’t have to continue beyond the football.
And so that’s the starting point for Roy. And then his journey is kind of, you know, discovering there is more and opening his heart to the world beyond what he knew.
JEFFREY JONES: Well, it’s a beautiful evolution, but let’s turn to Shrinking, which is such a magnificent show. And in the second season, you play a very different character.
You play Louis, who is the drunk driver that kills the lead character, Jimmy’s wife, in an accident, a death that really frames much of the show. And for listeners who haven’t seen this season yet, it’s a shockingly different portrayal than Roy Kent, which I’m sure you get identified with.
Louis’s entire universe changes with this accident. And his destiny, like that of Jimmy and Jimmy’s daughter Alice, is now shaped by this loss. So tell us about introducing this character. Why was it important for you to include Lewis in this journey of healing?
BRETT GOLDSTEIN: I think the thing, I know Bill Lawrence, is interested in and I’m very interested in, and I think happened a lot in Ted Lasso, is this idea of you take a kind of archetype, you take a person that you inherently will not like, should not like, don’t like.
I think Roy Kent starts off as a bit of a you know, he’s this kind of grumpy asshole. The first episode, I don’t think you necessarily love this guy. And so in this case, this was the most extreme example of, we wanted to tell a story of forgiveness. And we built this world, season one. We care about Jimmy and Alice.
We have seen what they have suffered and what they have survived because of this terrible accident. And we open season two on here is the guy. Here is the killer, and we call him drunk driver. He was officially a drunk driver. All these things make it kind of two dimensional. It’s easy to hate a drunk driver.
It’s easy to hate a killer. This guy ruined their life. He did ruin their life. The idea of forgiveness is simple enough in theory, but putting it in this context where it’s like, this is the hardest version of it. And if Jimmy at the end of Shrinking says, I do not forgive this man. I think as an audience, we completely understand that.
And then as the show goes on, you expand the view. You go, you see in flashback, you go, he wasn’t an alcoholic. Not that is even a bad thing either, as in people have their reasons, but the night of the accident, he was one drink over. It was something a lot of people watching the show, I’m sure have done where they go, no, we just round the corner. It’s just one drink. I’m only a little bit over. It’s fine.
And he did have a fiancé who he has lost because of this. He has lost as much as they have lost. But he is also so riddled with horror, with shame for what he has done. He’s this kind of open wound of a man just existing. His life is fucking tragic and their life is tragic because of the same thing.
And it was an accident, an awful thing to happen. But he is a person. And most people I believe aren’t bad. Some, may be. There are, I keep seeing examples where I’m like, Oh, maybe they genuinely are bad. But I think most people do bad things and regret that, or it was a mistake, or that wasn’t their intention and they hate themselves for having done the bad thing. I do believe overall that most people’s intentions are good.
JEFFREY JONES: And that so leads into this next question I wanted to ask you because it really does get at this seeing someone’s humanity. So the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s guiding principle was Ubuntu, which connotes this conception that my humanity is inextricably bound up in yours.
So as such, true healing is impossible without recognition of our common humanity and destiny. And Alice and Louis seem to understand this, that tragedy has shaped all of their lives, but only by seeing their common suffering and recognizing the pain and torment that they share, is this road to healing paved.
BRETT GOLDSTEIN: Well that’s exactly what we had talked about in the writer’s room. That exact thing in South Africa was a kind of reference and an inspiration for this, as was the film Mass, which I highly recommend to anyone. But the idea of the Alice and Louis scene where Alice confronts the man who killed her mother. And part of what we were trying to achieve in the writing of that is I’d also read, I would also recommend this book, The Apology by Eve Ensler, which is an unbelievable book in which she writes the apology she wished she had got from her dad.
She’d waited her whole life to hear these words from her dad, and it never came and her dad died. And she realised, Oh, I should do this myself. And she wrote this really incredible book. And so part of the thing with the Alice and Louis kind of showdown is for Louis to do the best apology. Like what is a good apology?
JEFFREY JONES: Yeah, that’s a very moving and emotional scene. Let’s take a listen.
CLIP: Shrinking
I’ve thought a lot about what I’d want to say to you, how I’d like to explain it all, why I was behind the wheel, how much I regret it. But none of that matters because it happened. And it was all my fault. And nothing I can do can make that better. All I can tell you is that not a single moment goes by that I don’t think about her. Or you. Or your dad. I think about you all, all the time. And I’m just so fucking sorry. I wish I could change it. I wish I could go back and do it–
I forgive you.
What?
I forgive you. It’s what my mom would have done.
BRETT GOLDSTEIN: It is, I believe, to acknowledge all of their pain, to admit everything that you did, and in a way to tell them they’re not mad. Like, essentially what Louis is saying is, you’re right, this happened, I did it, and all your pain is correct, and I can’t pretend otherwise, and I can’t take that away from you.
It is your right. All of what you think and feel is correct. And I am so sorry. It isn’t about my suffering. It is about what I did that led to this. But please know that I know all of this and feel it every day and think about it every day. And I think when he has this moment with her, he isn’t expecting forgiveness.
I think he truly isn’t. He just needs to, I think what’s been almost keeping him alive is this need to confess really, to acknowledge that it happened to not be, because he’s now in this kind of vacuum where this terrible tragedy happened. He’s all alone and there is no one to speak with about it.
And I think he needs to tell them he’s sorry. He doesn’t need to be, he doesn’t expect forgiveness, but he does need to apologize. And I think when he asks Alice about her mother, and in the moment when she tells him the story, he asked her a detail that she’d forgotten. And because of this conversation, she remembers a beautiful thing about her mom that she had that left her.
And so now there is something with this man where he has given her this gift by accident just by being curious. And she forgives him. And I think it surprises both of them. She definitely didn’t plan to and he didn’t expect it.
JEFFREY JONES: Yeah, it’s Alice’s role is seeing to me that this man who I was originally screaming at you fucker who killed my mom, but I think she’s the first to see that my humanity is connected to this guy and he is suffering too. And it’s such a beautiful portrayal. It is weird one minute to be laughing and the next I’m literally crying at your character. And so it’s such a different thing for a comedy to pull at us in these kinds of ways. But it’s a beautiful, it’s a beautifully written trajectory.
And, you know, for me, I see that forgiveness is not just about Louis and Alice, but seems to me a central theme, almost of all the characters and their interactions with each other. Is that ultimately, in your opinion, as a writer, the theme of this show?
BRETT GOLDSTEIN: That was a clear, from the outset season two was about forgiveness. And again, it’s this idea of that I know people who hold grudges and I’m sure I have and. But there comes a point where I truly do believe that holding on to hate and anger for someone hurts you, eventually it hurts you more than it hurts them because people move on with their lives. And I think there’s a moment where the negative energy required to hold on to hate for someone starts to only hurt you. And so there is in theory, I think it is good to forgive. I think it is better for you as a person.
JEFFREY JONES: Absolutely.
I want to come back to this thing about, you know, we live in a political moment. Masculinity was on the ballot in ways. I guess I just wondered, what do you think about this political moment in which there’s so much anger and resentment and frustration, but yet also the realization that we are all bound to each other and that’s how society will evolve?
BRETT GOLDSTEIN: I think it is. I don’t know what I think. I worry that social media has made things feel more extreme than they need to be and have polarized people and algorithms have sent people in opposite directions in a way that isn’t good or helpful. And I think all of that stuff frightens me. And I think there are a lot of things to be worried about and scared of, but I also cannot, it’s very, all of this, it’s very difficult because then everything becomes idealistic and I understand how difficult the world is, but I truly just believe you have to bring people together.
Otherwise, We’re fucked. I really do believe that, and as hard as it is to look across at someone on the other side of your beliefs or whatever, and to feel anger and rage, and often completely justifiable, even, it’s all a metaphor, you know what I mean? It’s all the same, what we’re talking about, is like, if you can find a way to connect and to see the similarities rather than the differences, I guess. It all sounds cheesy, but I don’t see any other way.
JEFFREY JONES: It’s real. I mean, I’m a recovering political scientist, but we know from experiments that when citizens actually talk despite the gulfs, despite their ideological rigidity walking in, they do actually see each other’s humanity. And so your point about social media is very well taken. It’s led to a point of isolation.
BRETT GOLDSTEIN: It’s why I do also believe like representation matters in entertainment because I do think the more you see people that are different from you and you see them as characters that you can relate to, it’s really simple, but I do think you go, Oh! If there was a type of person you’re scared of and you see them in a story that you relate to, I think it genuinely helps. I think you go, Oh yeah, I get that. You know what I mean?
JEFFREY JONES: Exactly.
Well, my last question for you, I asked this of Bill, I’ll ask you, what’s your therapist think of the show?
BRETT GOLDSTEIN: My therapist pretends he doesn’t watch it.
JEFFREY JONES: Well, it’s so wonderful for you to be with us today, Brett. And so nice to speak with the writer and actor who’s bringing this stuff to light. And we at Peabody and the Center for Media and Social Impact are really smitten with the show and truly wish you the best of luck with it.
BRETT GOLDSTEIN: We’re so grateful. I’m going to tell all the writers. That was so nice. Thank you very much.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Thank you to Jeffrey Jones and of course to Brett Goldstein and Bill Lawrence for joining us this episode to do a lot of work to dismantle conventional notions about masculinity, to explore the capacity for deep human drama in comedy, and of course to talk about some really great TV.
Something Bill said earlier in his conversation with Jeff really struck me. This idea that we’re all, to some extent, a product of our own references. It reminds me of something a comedy teacher told me once years ago, which was essentially, nothing in comedy is new. The element that makes it original is your perspective.
What’s so fascinating about Bill and Brett’s latest collaboration on Shrinking is that it seems to revisit these themes of finding connection that pervade Bill’s work through mentorship or friendship after a loss, but it revisits them from a cracked, imperfect angle. In a time when it really does feel like social media makes it harder for us to actually speak, to connect in person, as Jeff and Brett mentioned, Shrinking feels like it captures the emotional gulf that can exist between people who might see each other every day. Bill and Brett’s work dares to ask what happens when we take the leap across that chasm? And explores the wonderfully messy results.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: The Peabody Awards are decided unanimously. So to close out our episode on a lighter note, I bring you We Disrupt This Broadcast‘s Unanimous Decision, where we unanimously pick the most disruptive line of the day.
BILL LAWRENCE: It’s Hollywood, we all have shrinks.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Thanks for joining us today, and make sure to catch our next episode where we talk to Mo Amer, the creator and star of the Peabody Award winning series, Mo.
MO AMER: If you don’t offer different perspectives or different thought processes, then what’s the point? It’s just introducing these things in these, not only like cultures, but also the differences that make us a more informed human race.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: We Disrupt This Broadcast is a Peabody and Center for Media and Social Impact production hosted by me, Gabe González, with on air contributions from Caty Borum and Jeffrey Jones. The show is brought to you by executive producers Caty Borum, Jeffrey Jones, and Bethany Hall. Producer, Jordana Jason.
Writers, Sasha Stewart, Jordana Jason, Bethany Hall, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, and myself, Gabe González. Consulting producer, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. Researcher, Riley McLaughlin. Graphic designer, Olivia Klaus. Operations producer, Varsha Ramani. The marketing and communications team, Christine Drayer and Tunisia Singleton.
From PRX, the team is Terence Bernardo, Jennie Cataldo, Edwin Ochoa, and Amber Walker. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.