Spoilers for Season 2 of Shrinking are forward. If you happen to haven’t seen it, you’ll be able to stream it with an Apple TV+ subscription.
Shrinking’s remaining episode on the 2024 TV schedule left us with so many causes to cry and smile. Nonetheless, Harrison Ford’s massive speech about what he is grateful for was what induced each issues to occur concurrently. It was a candid, real and uncooked scene the place his character Paul lastly dropped his partitions and informed everybody how he felt, and it did not simply depart me in tears, the entire forged was crying too.
Within the Thanksgiving scene, Paul stood as much as say what he was grateful for and tearfully defined that the highway he’s on is just going to get harder. Nonetheless, whereas that’s the tough actuality, he expressed his gratitude and love for everybody in that room, telling them he appreciates their presence and that he’s “leaning” on them. There are not any ifs, ands or buts about it, between watching Harrison Ford tear up and understanding the fact of his character’s state of affairs, this speech was extremely transferring.
For Lukita Maxwell, who performs Alice, it was further emotional due to her private connection to Parkinson’s, as she informed me the next throughout an interview with CinemaBlend:
Everybody was crying. My grandmother handed away and had Parkinson’s. My grandmother handed away a pair years in the past, and he or she had Parkinson’s, and he or she by no means talked about her feelings and the way she was feeling coping with her sickness. And I imply, that is the fantastic thing about storytelling and good writing; I felt a catharsis watching Harrison say this stuff and discuss his fears and his hopes. And he is Harrison Ford. So it simply was an extremely poignant second for everyone on set. Everyone was crying.
I completely perceive the place Maxwell is coming from, as a result of I’ve additionally misplaced family members to sickness and most cancers. Whereas it’s laborious to be susceptible and discuss how laborious that is, it’s vital and wholesome. So, seeing Paul have the braveness to do it was profoundly transferring.
Maxwell additionally informed me that exterior of her private connection to the second, watching her on-screen dad, Jason Segel, watch Harrison Ford ship this candid speech made her break too. She mentioned:
Harrison’s efficiency made me emotional, but in addition watching Jason react to Harrison’s performing, that is what broke me.
Watching Jimmy watch Paul additionally broke me, as a result of he was going through the mortality of this man and mentor whom he adores. Michael Urie additionally cited that as a cause why he discovered the second so touching, as a result of “Jimmy is his mentor and seeing finality.” And that time was additionally amplified by Urie’s personal connection to Ford.
Throughout my chat with the Brian actor, he informed me he discovered Paul’s speech emotional as a result of he was connecting it again to Harrison Ford. Urie is a lifelong fan of the actor, and seeing him give “the efficiency of a lifetime” whereas speaking about the remainder of his life and accepting the “inevitability” made him emotional, as he defined:
I’ve seen, if not each film, then like 90% of his films, and I’ve by no means seen him be higher than [playing Paul]. He is at all times nice. However that was so deep. And he is 82, and he is nonetheless going sturdy with no indicators of slowing down. However there’s an inevitability whenever you hear him discuss that, whenever you begin to consider when he stops and when he is completed and when he slows down, and it was very transferring.
It really could be very transferring, as a result of like Paul, Harrison Ford is working and thriving to this present day and it’s type of unimaginable to image him not doing this anymore. Nonetheless, that’s how life works, and interested by that actually makes the feelings bubble up.
Together with the that means of this speech, the Brian actor informed me Ford didn’t simply do his scene when the digital camera was on him at 100%, he did that for each take, and that additionally made him emotional:
The opposite factor that was actually transferring about that day was that he was good each time. He had to try this again and again. And he was good even when the digital camera wasn’t on him. He was giving us a stupendous efficiency to react to.
General, this scene is among the most tearjerking and dramatic scenes on this comedy, as a result of it explicitly addresses this wrestle Paul has been internalizing for such a very long time. Harrison Ford additionally turned in, as Urie put it, a “efficiency of a lifetime,” and seeing him be so candid and expressive when he is usually fairly stoic and reserved added to the impression of this speech.
It’s moments like this that transfer each viewers and the forged that make Shrinking one in all Apple TV+’s finest exhibits and my favourite sequence of the yr. This present is aware of methods to faucet into very actual feelings, conditions and challenges that everybody faces, and so they achieve this in a caring and relatable manner. This scene of Paul saying what he is grateful for is a first-rate and tearjerking instance of precisely that.