Shrinking co-creator Bill Lawrence has said the show’s portrayal of Parkinson’s disease was inspired by Michael J. Fox.
The second season of the comedy drama show has just completed its run on Apple TV+ and stars Harrison Ford as Dr. Paul Rhoades, a therapist who has the neurodegenerative disease.
Lawrence, who created the show alongside lead star Jason Segel (How I Met Your Mother) and Brett Goldstein (Ted Lasso), spoke about the influence that the Back To The Future star had in the character’s inception in a live interview with People earlier this month (December 12).
“It’s cool to get to write about things you care about now,” Lawrence said. “And Michael J. Fox is my first mentor. So we wanted to represent it in hopefully an inspiring and not sad or tragic way.”
Lawrence and Fox worked together on the show Spin City between 1996 and 2002, and it was in 1998 that the latter publicly confirmed his Parkinson’s diagnosis. Lawrence’s own father has also been affected by the condition, as has Goldstein’s father.
“I found the first mentor in my life and career, Michael J. Fox, to be so inspiring,” Lawrence added. “The way he took it in stride and continues to work harder than anybody I know. And we want to kind of carry that spirit if we can into the show.”
In a two-star review of the first season of Shrinking, NME wrote: “The parts with Harrison Ford’s character, grumpy old Paul, are some of the strongest in the show. Paul has the beginnings of Parkinson’s disease and, like Jimmy, struggles with his relationship with daughter.”
“Ford can be funny, and the illness story is comparatively affecting, but the problem here is that it feels a little like two different shows stitched together. As a character, Paul doesn’t seem to belong in the world of Jimmy and Gaby, in part because his storyline – perhaps because of Ford’s strength as an actor – is handled relatively skilfully, without any of the grating injections of implausible gags.”
Fox, meanwhile, made headlines this summer for his appearance during Coldplay’s Glastonbury headline set something he later described as “fucking mind blowing”.
The post ‘Shrinking’ creator says Michael J. Fox inspired the show’s portrayal of Parkinson’s disease appeared first on NME.
