[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Shrinking.]

The Apple TV+ series Shrinking (which has already been picked up for a second season) is a heartfelt exploration of grief, and the tears, laughs and self-exploration that can follow. After losing his wife, grieving therapist and widowed dad Jimmy (Jason Segel) starts to break the rules by telling his clients what he really thinks and walks an ethical edge while pushing them to make the changes that could really help them. At the same time, Jimmy’s co-workers, friends, neighbors and clients help him rediscover what matters, after experiencing life-changing loss.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, executive producer/writer Segel talked about why Shrinking appealed to him, finding the right balance of laughter and tears, wanting to learn with each job that he does, how intimidating it can be to work with Harrison Ford, the father-daughter dynamic, how the ending came about, and how involved he is in the plan for future seasons. He also talked about returning for Season 2 of Winning Time, and his hope to make a movie version of Space Ghost with the script that he’s written.

Collider: Not to turn this interview into a therapy session, but watching this show helped me through some of my own shit, between laughing and crying and crying from laughing. Thank you for that. It’s a beautiful show.

JASON SEGEL: How cool, thanks.

When this TV series that Bill [Lawrence] and Brett [Goldstein] were working on was brought to you, what was the biggest selling point for you? How far along was it when they came to you about this?

SEGEL: It was essentially a premise. Both of them had wandered into the same idea from different angles, so it made sense for them to team up. By his own admission, Brett’s version was leaning more towards drama, and I think that pulled the show into a really interesting place. If I was gonna do another TV comedy, it would have to incorporate this other stuff that I’ve learned to really enjoy, which are more dramatic themes. And then, when they pitched it to me, it seemed cathartic, with laughter through tears, and vice versa. That’s the magic recipe. It’s that James L. Brooks, Broadcast News, Terms of Endearment vibe that has always been my favorite area.

Laughter certainly makes the subject of grief more palatable and easier to watch, but how challenging is it to keep the right balance of that throughout? Is it a fine line between making people cry and also keeping them laughing?

SEGEL: Yeah, sure. That was a mission statement, going in. There are a few ways to make sure that you have the ability to adjust those levels. For each scene, when you’re shooting it, you make sure that you give a range of performances and a range of tones, so that when you get into the editing room, it’s this crazy puzzle and you don’t quite know what it’s gonna be until you get in there. I’ve always thought, as has Bill, that the last stage of writing is the editing room. You get to do a lot in there. Also, that is the tone of life. We’re laughing at the wake with our family about some memory that we thought of. Heavy on heavy is not usually how it goes down. There are some moments like that, for sure, but as people, we tend to laugh our way through the hardest moments. Hopefully, the show is reflective of what life feels like.

Bill Lawrence told me that he has a three-season plan for this show. When you’re someone who has done a TV series (How I Met Your Mother) that you’ve spent a very long time on, did knowing that it could only be three seasons, make it more appealing to you? Is that something that you really think about, before agreeing to do another TV series?

SEGEL: Yeah. One of the things that I realized about myself, after How I Met Your Mother, is that part of the reason I’m doing this job is to learn. With each job, you get to take a little master class on whatever subject it is that you’re exploring, and not just the subject, but your relationship to it. It’s a really amazing gift of the job. One of the things I really enjoy is tackling new projects constantly knowing that streaming has changed the landscape, so that you can do a project like this while you do other things, and not have to do 24 episodes a year. It was a whole different era of television, when we did How I Met Your Mother.

These are not just friendships on this show. They’re not just work relationships. This is really a family, regardless of their flaws and their mistakes, but none of that works, if the pieces of the cast don’t fit together and you all don’t find your rhythm together. What was it like to find that rhythm with each of these actors?

SEGEL: Everyone is playing a different instrument in the cast. It’s somehow conducted like a symphony, where everyone plays together, and there are parts where different people are soloing and different instruments are playing together. I think that’s why it works. When everyone’s playing the same instrument, it starts to get a little bit repetitive, but there’s joy to every combination you see on screen. When I’m watching, I’m proud to say that I enjoy the scenes I’m not in the most. When I see Harrison [Ford] and Alice (Lukita Maxwell) doing a scene together, it’s just amazing. And then, you jump to Christa [Miller] and Jessica [Williams], and just every combination works. I think the reason is because everyone is really fundamentally different from one another. We just lucked out.

When you work with Harrison Ford, how do you not just want to hang out with him, all day, every day?

SEGEL: Well, to be totally honest, Harrison is a pretty intimidating present. This guy you’ve idolized forever shows up on set and you’re acting with him, your initial thought actually isn’t, “God, I’d love to hang out with this guy.” It’s more, “I hope that I’m pleasing to him.” I felt awe. But one of the things he does that is really generous is that he tries to burst through that awe and make you feel like a peer and a contemporary. I think that my relationship to Harrison very much mirrored Jimmy and Paul’s relationship. I wanted his approval. I wanted him to tell me I was doing a good job, and he did. He was very kind to me.

When grief hits a family and one parent is left with the child, it often turns into a situation where the child does the parenting, at least for a little bit. What was it like to explore that father-daughter dynamic in this and to really form that bond together?

SEGEL: I always viewed that as the primary arc of the show. There are a lot of really amazing, compelling storylines going on, but I think the one that I resonated with the most was about a man rebuilding his family, and that starts with he and his daughter. It becomes a surrogate family, but this relationship with his daughter, at the beginning, has turned entirely on its head. Episode by episode, it was a litmus test to how Jimmy was doing. His relationship with his daughter was a mirror for that.

Obviously, he makes some questionable decisions when it comes to his patients. He wants to help them so much that it blurs that patient-therapist dynamic a bit, and none more so than with Sean (Luke Tennie). What do you think it is about Sean, specifically, that makes him take things further than he does with his other patients?

SEGEL: Sean has the benefit of meeting Jimmy on nervous breakdown day. Sean walks in at the moment when Jimmy can’t take it anymore and something has gotta change. Sean really becomes the subject of that something’s gotta change obsession, and he’s gonna do whatever it takes. It’s gonna be unconventional, by nature of the fact that he and all of his patients have been stuck because what he’s been doing hasn’t been working.

I love the relationship between Jimmy and Gaby. What have you most enjoyed about finding that dynamic with Jessica Williams?

SEGEL: Doing scenes with Jessica felt very similar to when I was doing scenes with Paul Rudd. There was just some sense that we understood each other, comedically. We very quickly understood each other’s moves and we were never gonna let each other fall. Whatever someone threw out there, the other person was gonna catch, spin, and throw it back.

We get a lot of the bigger group scenes, but we also get personal relationships between these characters. Was there one of those relationships that most surprised you this season, as far as how it played out?

SEGEL: My favorite moment in the season, actually, is when Ted McGinley finally stands up for himself. When Liz says to Derek, “I’m gonna need you to leave the house sometimes or you’re gonna drive me crazy,” Derek says, “Sweetie, I’ve earned this time. If I’m gonna drive you crazy, it’s your job to find something to do.” When I saw that moment, I actually cheered because he had been written like such a pushover. One of the things I love about the show is subverting expectations.

Whose idea was the ending for the season, and how did you find out the way the season would end? I love that the ending is a bit shocking.

SEGEL: We wanted to really honor the fact that when that the tried and true methods are tried and true for a reason, and when you deviate from them and start doing experimental therapy techniques, it would have been disingenuous not to acknowledge that it could go really poorly. We wanted to make sure that we honored that.

With Season 2, do you hope to see how that will affect your character?

SEGEL: Yes. I would imagine that will definitely be something that Jimmy has to deal, with repercussions professionally and personally, knowing that he’s at least somewhat responsible for that. It is quite a moment.

When it comes to a second season and even a third season, how much are you aware of what comes next for these characters? Are you guys constantly having conversations about what would come next for them?

SEGEL: Bill and Brett and the gang are very generous, in that they keep me filled in and ask for my contributions, and all of that, but they’re a bunch of geniuses. There was a loose plan when we started, and then you make pivots based on what ends up working and what ends up surprising you, throughout the season. That’s the beauty of writing. It ends up being a little different from how you pictured, if you’re paying attention to what’s actually happening.

The last time I spoke to you was for Winning Time, which is a very different series from Shrinking. Are you back for Season 2 of that show?

SEGEL: Yes, history dictates that Paul Westhead becomes the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers and has a really ill-fated season, feuding with Magic Johnson, so we’ll explore that in Season 2.

What did you most enjoy about doing a project like that, where you really were creating your own world and figuring out your place in it? There are so many characters and so many moving parts, so what was that like to return to, once you actually had a sense of how it all works?

SEGEL: It was honestly one of the most joyful experiences of my career, both seasons. I was not responsible for shouldering the show and I knew exactly what my job was, which was to come in and just nail scenes, almost like a pinch hitter. It felt really fun and really exciting. Every day, I would show up to set and think, “My job today is to kill the scene, and that’s about it.” They did an amazing job, between the costumes and the sets and the camera work and the cinematography. They really did transport the viewer.

Do you know what you’ll be doing next?

SEGEL: Hopefully, we’ll be doing season two of [Shrinking]. Beyond that, I’m always writing and I have something I hope to make, after this wraps. I have two things that are written, that are ready to be made. One of them is the movie version of Space Ghost. I would like to make that, but who the heck knows? That’s a big one, so there are a lot of moving parts. And then, I’ve written another series, as well, that I’d like to make.

What made you decide to write Space Ghost, especially not knowing if it will ever get made?

SEGEL: I’m really not good with idle time. Anyone who writes knows that writing is hard. Most of the time, when I think of an idea, I try not to write it. And then, if it nags at me and I find myself thinking about it on a walk, at dinner, or as I’m falling asleep, eventually I get the sense that it’s not gonna leave me alone unless I exorcize it, so I start writing.

Shrinking is available to stream at Apple TV+.