Jessica Williams found her footing on “Shrinking” long before the Apple TV+ comedy’s penultimate episode. But there’s a moment of sheer joy and improvisation in Episode 9, “Moving Forward,” that Williams says is her favorite of the entire first season. After her character, Gaby, walks in on a post-coital moment Paul (Harrison Ford) shares with his doctor Julie (Wendie Malick), Gaby’s response is one of shock, admiration, and childlike wonder.
“All of that I feel like is one of the things I’m most proud of this season,” Williams tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview. “I love the way it was edited and directed, and they caught so many good moments. And I even like when Gaby leaves the scene, and Harrison’s just rolling his eyes at me. There’s just so much there that I really love. I’m so happy that just gets to exist and that I got to do it with Harrison Ford. I was really comfortable with Gaby at that point. It was really fun and playful, and I’m so proud of that work.”
Co-created by Bill Lawrence, Brett Goldstein and Jason Segel, “Shrinking” is a comedy about a therapist named Jimmy (played by Segel) trying to piece his life back together a year after his wife’s death. But despite that weighty premise, the show is funny: It’s about grief and therapy but also found families and unexpected relationships. Williams is at the center of the narrative as Gaby, a co-worker, and friend of Jimmy and Paul who eventually finds herself romantically involved with Jimmy.
“When I initially signed on, they didn’t really know that much about Gaby, they just had a few things that they knew they wanted to have happened to her,” Williams says of landing the role. Gaby was written as a balance between Jimmy, who is grieving, and Paul, who is a curmudgeon with his own trauma – including a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease and a somewhat estranged daughter. Williams was encouraged to make Gaby her own and improvise whenever possible in an effort to flesh out the character.
“What they did was, a lot of times we would shoot, and then the writers would watch what we shot – and then they would kind of respond to what I was improvising or what worked for my character,” Williams says. “So then that by the time you get into that second half of the season, Gaby is very much more developed, I think. So it was just a lot of improvising and figuring out her rhythm and her beats and what worked and what didn’t.”
At only 33, Williams already has a great comedy background. She became the youngest correspondent in the history of “The Daily Show” at 22 and she has since excelled in film and television roles, notably “The Incredible Jessica James,” “Booksmart,” and Season 2 of “Love Life.” One of Williams’ best traits is her ability to generate great chemistry with her fellow scene partners, a skill that came in handy on “Shrinking,” which is all about the characters’ relationships – be it between Gaby and Jimmy, Gaby and Paul, or Gaby and Jimmy’s nosy neighbor, Liz, played by Christa Miller.
“I thought the most important thing was trying to figure out her relationships with each person, whether it was with Liz being very specific, with Jason being very specific, with Harrison being very specific. And I think once I kind of attacked those scenes with specificity as much as possible, then Gaby sort of fell into place,” Williams says. “So with Harrison, for example, it’s really fun to bother him. That’s just fun and funny to me. And just knowing what I know about Harrison, and just seeing the way he plays Paul, helped. I’d be like, ‘What can I give him to be just more irritating and more upbeat.’ And so I just sort of played into that. Then that helped me inform how Gaby was going to be in those scenes. Especially watching it back, because we did it like a year ago, it was like, ‘Oh, cool. It’s cool to see how this how our relationships turned out.’”
All episodes of “Shrinking” are streaming now on Apple TV+. The show will return for Season 2.
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