Harrison Ford had no idea who Jason Segel was before he ‘shrunk’

Here’s a riddle Indiana Jones might be able to solve: Who is Jason Segel?

According to Shrinking executive producers Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein, Harrison Ford was not familiar with Segel’s work before signing on to the Apple TV+ series. The Forgetting Sarah Marshall star and screenwriter Segel writes, executive produces and stars in Shrinking, with Ford playing his onscreen mentor who is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

Lawrence, who serves as the EP, recalled his first conversation with Ford to TV Insider.

“Ford: ‘Hey, that’s a really good script. Am I going to be in the second one?'” Lawrence said, adding that he told the Star Wars icon, “You can be in as much as you want.”

Ford replied, “Who else is in it?”

Lawrence said, “I’m going to ask Jason Segel to call you,” to which Ford asked, “Who is Jason Segel?”

Lawrence later quipped, “Uh, I’ll send you some movies first.”

Lawrence added to TVInsider, “I’ve finally reached the age where I’m not as scared and embarrassed about people saying no to me as I was as a kid,” referring to cold calling by Ford.

Fellow “Shrinking” EP Goldstein said of Ford, “He really relates to the character and he wanted to do it. When we watched him do comedy, on our first read you could see the joy in his eyes causing those huge laughs. He’s damn funny. I think it’s a passion for him to do a proper comedy, which he hasn’t really done. And he’s very good at it.”

Ford is also now leading the 1923 limited series, set in Taylor Sheridan’s “Yellowstone” cinematic universe. Ford’s “1923” co-star James Badge Dale admitted that he and Ford need a “flowchart” to figure out how they relate to Kevin Costner’s John Dutton character for the hit “Yellowstone” series.

“That was the running joke. Harrison and I would say, ‘I think we’re related, I don’t know how,'” Dale said. “I don’t know the tree. I have seen [flow charts] online when people have tried to create them. I don’t know if these are accurate or not. And here’s the thing, this is Taylor [Sheridan’s] Universe. We could say one thing or think one thing and Taylor can decide something else and we’ll see 1943 and realize it’s a little bit different and he’ll change it.”

“Shrinking” premieres January 27 on Apple TV+.

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