Jason Segel is not afraid of the ‘dirty underneath’

But, one in three people have insulin resistance in our country.

“And if you have insulin resistance, you are double the likelihood of developing major depression.”

We explore the link between your body and your brain. Listen on Sharp Wave, the science podcast from NPR. This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross. My guest Jason Seagull is nominated for an Emmy for his leading role in the series Shrinking. The first three seasons are streaming on Apple TV. When we first meet his character, Jimmy, he's a psychotherapist who's having a nervous breakdown,

but continues to work with his patients.

Believing he's having a breakthrough as a therapist, he intervenes in his patient's lives.

He gives them inappropriate advice to do things Jimmy believes will change their lives for the better and prevent them from complaining about the same things week after week, without ever making an effort to fix the problems.

“The reason Jimmy is falling apart is that his wife was killed in a car accident a year ago.”

His teenage daughter is in high school when the serious starts. She accuses him of being so absorbed in his own grief. He's emotionally abandoned her instead of helping her through her grief. Jimmy's mentor and colleague is played by Harrison Ford, who's also nominated for an Emmy as his co-star Jessica Williams. Seagull got his first memorable role in Freaks and Geeks. The characters were high school friends. After they show us canceled,

Seagull wrote and starred in the film for Getting Sarah Marshall. He wrote and was the human star of the movie musical The Muppets. He was one of the stars of how I met your mother, played writer David Foster Wallace in the film The End of the Tour, and wrote and starred in the serious dispatches from elsewhere.

Let's start with a scene from the first episode of Shrinking.

It will give you an idea of how Seagull's character has lost his bearings as a therapist and is pushing his patients to do what he thinks they need to do to move forward. Here he is with his patient Grace, played by Heidi Gardner. He's just kept on going on and on about how dumb I am. He said if it weren't for my great, no one would want to take care of me, so it's almost nice.

It's not nice. I know, but he loves me. Grace, we've been doing this for two years. Two years of your life.

I have never seen a guy, tell a woman that she is dumb and lucky she has great,

and thought to myself, wow, they must really be in love. And he keeps telling me how great he is. Well, I saw him. He's not that great. His muscles are too big. His shirts are too tight. Nobody likes that. It's gross. I am sorry. I don't know what's happening, because I was talking to him. Grace, your husband is emotionally abusive. He's not working on him. He doesn't intend to.

He's made you think it's all you deserve. It's not. Just fucking leave him. Yes, not that easy. It is that easy. You don't have any kids. Just go to your sisters and then cover. But then leave him or I'm done being your therapist. Okay. Jason Seagull, welcome back to fresh air and congratulations on the Emmy nomination and on the series. So I should say the outcome does not go well.

It depends on how you look at it. It's good to talk to you again. By the way, I was saying to you in our little pre-interview session. You're one of my very first interviews when I was a little guy. My early 20s and it's so nice to be talking to you again. It's a pleasure to have you back. We also talked about the Muppets movie. That was a lot of fun. Yeah, that's right. That was something.

“First of all, what should Jimmy have done? What do you think?”

Well, it's an interesting thing because this is the extreme example of this kind of therapy method that the show is based on this group of therapists who kind of broke convention and realized that people were spending a lot of time week after week rehashing where things came from in their past. In a reality, what they really needed was some hope about what to do on Tuesday. You know, it's like, I have to have this talk with my boss on Tuesday and I have all these feelings about it and you're spending week after week figuring out why you have feelings about authority figures.

But Tuesday is coming, you know? And so this group of therapists decided that they were going to kind of change the rules a bit. To tell people what to do on Tuesday. And then in the meantime, we will get to figuring out why you had such a hard time figuring it out. And so this is the beginning of that approach to therapy that we see, you know, as the show progresses of, you know, people really just want to be told what to do to some extent.

Who are these therapists that you're talking about?

“One of them is Phil Stutt, who there is a documentary about. And he has a whole web of people that, you know, that he trained and works with a big group of therapists who all have the same, the same idea that what people really want is some hope.”

And if you can send a patient out of the room with some hope in some direction, they're much more likely to come back and they're much more likely to affect change in their life. Did you participate in that kind of therapy?

Listen, one of these guys has become my actual therapist and it totally changed my life. He's absolutely incredible.

And I had done therapy throughout my life and, you know, like they said, I had spent a lot of time talking about the same stuff from my childhood or this or that. And to finally be given some direction about, hey, next time this happens, this is what I want you to do. Sometimes as reductive as like, I want you to say this sentence next time this person does this. And all of a sudden your life starts operating more smoothly. And then you start to pick up the why of it all. And as a matter of fact, the last lines of this season that we just, you know, finish that aired season three.

Jimmy finally gets to the dirty underneath of why he can't move forward. This, this idea of who would want me now, you know, I'm all covered in scars.

That came from a real therapy session I had with, with Barry, where I had to show up to this thing where I was going to be around somebody who I, who I had kind of come up with.

And I've had a twisty, attorney life and some, some rocky moments. And this guy was going to see it had just worn it all a lot more lightly than I had. And I was talking to my therapist Barry about it. And I said, you know, I think I feel a little bit embarrassed. I feel embarrassed to walk into this room. And he has worn it all so lightly. And I'm showing up covered in scars. And without missing a beat, he said, what a shame it would be to show up anywhere at 45 years old not covered in scars. Isn't that what Harrison Ford said?

I got off the phone with my therapist. I called. I called the writer's room and I said, guys, this is how this is how this ends.

That's so interesting. Yeah. That moment released so much personal, whatever you would call it, shame, embarrassment about that I've lived a complicated life. And the beauty of doing shrinking is when people come up to you, it's not like I love this joke or I love the Dracula puppet musical. These are all things that I'm really proud of. But people come up for shrinking and they say, hey, I was going through XYZ and something that you guys talked about on there really helped me.

I've had a lot of people come up and say, that thing about scars really stuck with me. It's, it's a sign of a life fully lived, you know? No, absolutely, that stuck with me too. I've heard you say that at least when you were younger, not know how it is, now you had trouble making decisions.

“And I'm wondering if that relates to how much you like this form of therapy was somebody suggests what you should do.”

One of the things that I've come to realize and getting to know myself for this long is I seem to have like the wrong size computer for my needs. It's like it's just crunching numbers and scenarios instead of letting me settle in and enjoy my life. And it's been that way since I'm really young, that kind of emo emotional kid and every decision felt so weighty. And I think that it has been very beneficial to my work because I seem to feel things like 1.5 times the normal amount. But it has been kind of stifling in my personal life.

And so yes, I think having somebody simplify the equation has been a really helpful thing. I will say, like, and I have, throughout my past and kind of hesitant to talk about personal life stuff, but I'm getting married this year. And my fiance, thank you so much. My fiance does a very similar thing for me. She is a dancer and she kind of lives in her body and is a very grounding force that I have been needing in my life of someone who just says, hey.

“I know you're thinking a lot right now, but you know our life is great, right?”

And I don't have that voice. That voice does not live in me. And so that's also been really helpful for kind of kind of calming me down a bit. But that's the kind of voice that drives so many artists of very sort, writers, musicians like you're unhappy and you're frustrated.

Listen, I don't know if you are similar, but I will be thinking about the worst case scenario, or you know, some dumb, like, you know, I built something too close to the property line and now it can't be permitted.

You know, I'll be thinking about something like this, and I'll be really stewing on it and I'll think, god, my brain won't let me relax.

This happened just the other night. I've been working on an edit and we're having a hard time cracking something at three a.m. I woke up with the solution. I said, oh, that scene is in the wrong place.

“It's not that that scene doesn't work, but it actually ruins a scene three scenes later without even kind of realizing that's what it's doing.”

And then I take that scene out and all of a sudden the thing works, and I have to, it's the same brain. You know what I mean, so it's sort of you got to take the good with the bad, the same brain that's going to obsess over the property line and permitting is also the one that is making some pretty cool art.

You know, with decision making, did you and do you always think that, you know, you can see both sides.

Well, this decision would be better than that decision, so it's hard to decide which is best, but you're sure there's going to be consequences if you make the wrong choice. Yeah, I wish it was more rational than it is. I think it's honestly, I think it's like a close cousin to OCD. I think that it's like the actual stuff is a little bit of a mask.

“You know what I mean, I'm like fooling myself if I think any of this obsession or worrying is about anything real, but you know, it's as simple as like, oh, you know what?”

If I'm worrying about the property line right now, life must actually be in pretty good shape.

You know what I mean, it's learning that kind of stuff. Do you actually have OCD when you're diagnosed with that? Yeah, and it manifests in a bunch different ways, but like it, you know, when I was young, really, really young, it was night terrors that turned into like compulsively checking door knobs. And I've found a lot of ways to channel it into creativity. Creativity has been a really good friend.

“I mean, it's been my beloved since I'm young until I met my partner, like, me and creativity were right or die.”

Do you think that those nightmares figured into your series Dispatches from elsewhere, which is a real nightmarish confusing premise? You wrote and started it. And you know, the character is suddenly in this like other like world kind of like the environment is mostly but not completely familiar, but everything happening is totally strange kind of like nightmarish. Yeah, my nightmarish figured more, I write these kids books called Nightmarish actually that like are very much about that about night terrors.

And that was kind of how I exercised those feelings. Dispatches from elsewhere was something different for me. I had reached this moment of existential crisis around 33 years old where I didn't know why I was doing any of this stuff and I was no longer really enjoying myself making things. I think I had gotten maybe two strategic about what I was trying to write and it also coincided. I'm a sober guy for a long time now, but you know, 13 years or so and and it coincided with me getting sober and all of a sudden not thinking things were funny anymore and I was going to known for making comedy.

I was just as really scared to be honest with you about what the rest of my creative life looked like. And I had what I guess you would describe as writer's block, I hadn't written anything since the Muppets, just nothing was happening. And then I saw this documentary called the Institute about this real life art experiment that happened in San Francisco where all of a sudden these flyers were put on lamp posts with nothing pointing you towards them like it wasn't sweaty at all. It just said like dolphin communications testing with pull tabs at the bottom human force field experiments with pull tabs at the bottom.

And if you were the type of person who pulled a pull tab you were told to you know you called this number and you were told to report to this address and you went down and you basically long story short were launched into this grown-up scavenger hunt throughout the city of San Francisco that lasted for like three years and grown-ups were showing up from all sorts of socioeconomic groups and totally different types of people who just felt like there should be more. I was like the underlying thing of it and it's like the thing that drives rolled all books or Harry Potter this idea that someone's going to show up and say like shh your meant for more there's magic over here you know it was that for grown-ups and.

Where is the guy who wrote the Dracula puppet musical and forgetting ceremonial you know like where is the guy who wasn't afraid. And so I called the guy who created the real life San Francisco experiment I asked him if I could adapt it into a TV show and he let me adapt this thing.

“And that's something that really caught on it's something that I am so proud of and it's something that meant so much to me personally because I really put my insides outside.”

Making that show like I wrote from my guts again.

You have talked about how after doing so much comedy and rom-coms that you wanted to do dramatic acting and try that and learn from that. So you did you know the end of the tour where you played David Foster Wallace and then you know you created the series you're just talking about dispatches from elsewhere. Shrinking is like part comedy part drama you get to do both and you've said in the past that you like to push even in a comedy you like you to push your character as dark as the character can get because you feel like.

You can make the character inherently likable so that people no matter how dark the character is will root for them. And a wondering if you feel like you have that kind of likability and real life that even if you're depressed even if you get really dark.

That people will root for you and stick with you you know that you emanating nothing like ability to get by with other people.

I'm very vulnerable in a way that makes me like a I think I feel a bit like a surrogate for for oneself like it's kind of what I do on screen.

“I think I'm open enough about that life is tricky and funny and complicated and hard and weird and man what a ride what a ride life is you know.”

And I'm kind of open about that sometimes I'm just shaking around by you know I think that sometimes people can look at me at least on screen maybe in real life and think like oh me too.

Oh he's he's talking about the thing I'm not saying out loud you know one of the things I look for when I'm doing work like on a scene or in a show or movie is like what is the dirty underneath what is the thing that they're not saying because all of the dialogue is what someone is willing to say.

“And we all have this other stuff that we're hiding and I think that for whatever reason I'm like kind of devoid of pride or shame about the dirty underneath.”

I'm kind of willing to express it in life and on my face creatively and you know just say the stuff like I'll say the stuff that a lot of people are trying to hide. I want to get back to the kind of therapy that inspired the kind of therapy or character is practicing in the series of intervening in people's lives and telling them what they should do as opposed to trying to like gently lead them to question themselves and discover a solution for themselves. Is that has the series been controversial among therapists for suggesting that that approach could be very helpful approach as well as it could be a destructive approach.

I don't read the internet at all I'm scared of the internet. I thought you might know therapists who are telling you directly. Well that all I will tell you is that the therapists who have come up to me about it have almost unanimously said that it is wish fulfillment for therapists because the experiences for them. You are sitting there knowing exactly what the answer is and week after week you are trying to use like the secretic method to like guide them to what to you is a very obvious decision you know and it's kind of funny because in real life.

Friends who are the least qualified are the most eager to tell you what to do and your therapist who is the most qualified feels the least enabled to tell you what to do and so I think that therapists love the idea of being able to just say like oh my god just leave him just leave him you know.

We'll be right back after a short break I'm Terry Gross and this is fresh air.

“A lot of us are short on time but is our time really going where we want it to they say when your schedule begins to align with your values is when we begin to feel that inner peace.”

How to take a time audit and other timely advice on the life kit podcast listen to life kit on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. It's hard to refine your taste when everything in your algorithm is buying for your attention is that influence or you follow giving you the right advice. Let's should be actually paying attention to our social media feeds this week on its been a minute culture critic and host of the new podcast feedback.

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How did we get here that's a question we have been trying to answer a lot here at NPR we are exploring global histories on through line. We're hearing from national security experts on sources and methods we're watching the markets with planet money. You can support this work across all our podcasts within PR plus find out more at plus dot npr dot org. This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Jason Seagull he's nominated for an Emmy for his leading role as a psychotherapist who's having his own mental health crisis in the comedy drama series shrinking.

“How is the series pitched to you and it was your idea apparently to add this kind of therapy?”

No, not really it was Brett Goldstein and Bill Lawrence came to me. They had both had similar ideas about a theory that they are the creators of Ted Lasso. I think Bill and Jason Seagull, so the creators of Lasso, Brett is a writer on it and then Bill Brett and I are the creators of shrinking.

The reality is I kind of got a great free ride on it. Bill and Brett had thought of these therapy ideas and they didn't have a script yet,

but they each had this idea about a therapist going through a nervous breakdown and they pitched me the idea and I think my contribution to it was what you had brought up, which is I feel like I have garnered a lot of goodwill over my career and people are rooting for the characters I play. Let's push this guy as far as we can into the red because I feel like I can pull him out of the nose dive.

“So let's be brave and in the opening, I think it's the opening scene of the show. I am in my backyard with sex workers and booze and drugs and my daughter is upstairs.”

It is pretty unlikable first depiction because I felt like if you start this guy at the rockyest of rock bottoms, you have a long way to go to pull him out and I just believed I could make you feel sympathetic for him. So then we jumped in and we wrote the pilot and made the show in that history.

The second truth to how it happened allegedly is I have a place in a town called Ohio, a little country town and I love it there.

And I walk around town like Big Bird in Ohio. I wake up every morning and I take this 45-minute walk through town that's kind of like like the beginning of beauty in the beast. I'm like waving at the bigger and like shops are opening and I just like I just love it. I feel very much like myself. Apparently what really happened is one of the producers was on vacation in Ohio and I was taken one of these Muppity walks through town and he saw me from across the street and texted Bill Lawrence. I just saw Jason Seagull. He seems like a happy guy. Let's make a show with him and here we are.

So we've heard you with a patient in a scene from the series and now I want to play a scene with you talking to your mentor Paul, who is considerably older than you are he's played by Harrison Ford. Paul in the series gets diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and his symptoms progress through the series and you've been really helpful to him as his symptoms have progressed. You've been there for him but at this point in the series Paul Harrison Ford's character is leaving a lay and moving to Connecticut to be close to his daughter who he'd been a strange trauma in the past but the relationship has started up again. He owns the building where he practiced along with you and along with Jessica Williams, whose character Gabby, he gave the building and the practice to because it was her dream.

Oh man I know what you're about to play I haven't watched this scene since I did it. Why were you afraid to? No quite the opposite.

This scene with Harrison that you're about to play I knew was coming for the whole season you know because I get to kind of know the story lines in advance and I think the whole season I was thinking to myself boy when we get to the end of this season. I'm going to be on a balcony with Harrison Ford acting my guts out you know and it's really important to me that I'd be great. You know it's like you're going to play basketball Michael Jordan or something and man when that scene came I was not afraid and I just was honest I didn't show off and I did all the things that I feel like make a scene good and at the end when they said cut Harrison looked at me and he said so excited.

You did it kid and we hugged and I didn't need to add any other like judgment to that moment. Does that make sense? Sure and he calls you kid in the series too. Yeah yeah now he's he's become a really special part of my life but yeah let's hear it I haven't heard it before. Okay and to set it up just a little further the subtext of this is that Jimmy was felt like hurt by his own father and emotionally abandoned because his father was always like disappearing on him and now.

“Jimmy's father is going to go on a fishing trip instead of going to Jimmy's daughter's graduation and Jimmy's really angry with his father for now emotionally abandoning his daughter at least that's how Jimmy sees it.”

So here here you are as Jimmy with Harrison Ford as your mentor and fellow therapist Paul you speak first.

You gave the practice to Gabby we talked about this years ago. You said you hated paper working all you wanted to do was spend time with the patients people change you didn't even check with me Paul. Would you have wanted it? No, so you're angry with me for not offering you something that you don't want. Yes, I am. I'm supposed to be your guy. And this, this is how you treat me. I don't deserve it. No, I'm mad Paul and I'm embarrassed. I have to find out from make that you're moving you don't even have the decency to come and look me in my eyes and tell me that you're leaving me.

Let's take a break. I think these feelings that you're having might be meant for someone else.

“I think they're meant for both of you. I get it now. I'm not as important to you as you are to me.”

I just feel stupid to take me that long to realize it. So how does the scene sound to you actually hearing it now? I don't want to put you on the spot and feel like you have to brag about your performance.

Let's say, luckily, that's not how I feel. I always feel vulnerable when I hear or watch myself acting because I think like the feeling you're feeling if you're doing it right is so vital.

That then the, um, it translating to the outside part of you always like by the clumsy act of expression is going to be like one step less vital, but I feel, I feel like I feel like I sound like how people sound when they're feeling those things, you know.

“Sounds like you're choking. Yeah. I try really hard. I think that this might be the key to acting, but I try really hard not to show off.”

That I think that's one of the things that you learn as you're getting more familiar with working with a camera. Boy, you want to show off. Like the camera's getting ever closer to you as the coverage goes on, you know, so some parts of you are activating like, oh gosh, it's my turn, you know, or oh, it's getting closer now's the time to really show them.

So I went back and I read reviews of some of his great performances and one of them said Jeff Bridges may be the least self-conscious actor working today.

“And I thought, oh yeah, that's the goal is to be as unself-conscious between action and cut as possible.”

Like just don't show off. Don't try to, don't try to show them just be really how honest can you be between action and cut, you know. And then you start adding like taking it for a spin while you're out there and that requires some bravery and all that, but I guess during that scene, but with Harrison between action and cut, I just tried to really know what I was feeling. When people talk about acting like he might call myself the character, like understand what Jimmy was feeling, that's not really my experience of doing acting. I'm like, what am I feeling right now, you know.

I don't have to search like what is Jimmy feeling, what am I feeling and then just like just do that.

I have to reintroduce you again here if you're just doing us, I guess this Jason Seagull, he's nominated for an Emmy for his leading role in the series shrinking. The first three seasons are streaming on Apple TV. We'll be right back. This is fresh air. History is intriguing, but unlike the present, it can feel far off. On NPR's through line, we bring it back to life and put you in the middle of it. Go inside the stories from then that shape the world we live in now. Find NPR's through line wherever you get your podcasts.

“Oh, hey there, I'm Brittany Loose and I don't know, maybe this is a little out of pocket to say, but I think you should listen to my podcast.”

It's called it's been a minute and I love it and I think you will too over the past couple months over 100,000 new listeners started tuning in. Find out why listen to the it's been a minute podcast from NPR today. This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Jason Seagull. He's nominated for an Emmy for his leading role as a psychotherapist who's having his own mental health crisis in the comedy drama series shrinking. Seagull got a start when he was in his late teens and was one of the stars of freaks and geeks.

After it was canceled, he wrote and starred in the rom-com for getting Sarah Marshall. He wrote the movie musical The Muppets and was The Human Star and was one of the stars of how I met your mother. I love how you call me The Human Star of The Muppets. It gives me such joy. Well, especially since you've said you sometimes feel like a muppet. I thought I'd emphasize that you were the Human Star as opposed to one of the muppets. So this question is going to lead to something about shrinking. I'm taking the long route around.

So this route starts with Dracula's lament. So Jedi Apatau is one of the executive producers of freaks and geeks. The series that made you as a known actor. And after it was canceled, you were working on a rock musical that you were writing about a vampire. And it was a, you know, you played a CD and played one of the songs for Judd Apatau. And he said, "Don't ever play this for anyone else again." So before we hear the song that you played Judd Apatau, which I played before on the show when you were on, but that was a long time ago. I love listening to this.

But just to set it up, tell us what the musical was. Just a little plot synopsis.

So yeah, I mean, a little plot synopsis is basically, it was basically going to be for getting ceremonial, but it was going to be Dracula.

It was going to be Dracula instead of the human Jason Seagull.

“I think it's as simple as that. I had kind of a life altering breakup at the time, you know, things feel so man.”

So meaningful, you know, when you're experiencing them for the first time, and as soon as this woman walked out on my apartment, I sat down and I wrote this song. First I wrote it as a human, and then minutes later I started singing it as Dracula, and I'm like, "Oh my God, this is it." A Dracula puppet breakup musical. Do you want to set up the song at all before we hear it?

She's hearing it for the first time, and is essentially mortified.

Okay, here we go.

“It's getting kind of hard to believe things are going to get better.”

I've been drowning too long to believe that the time's going to turn. I've been living too hard to believe things are going to get past you. I'm still trying to shake off the pain from the lessons I've learned. And if I see Van Helsing, I swear to the Lord, I will swear here. I thank you from me, but I swear I won't let it be so.

I'm not wrong, I'm not wrong, I'm wrong down the space where there's the capital to take it. I'm not wrong, I'm not wrong. Okay, so what I'm wondering among other things, first of all, I love hearing that song. I laugh every time I hear it. I am wondering, I know you love the musical I miss.

I know they miss made a huge impression on you. I know you've sung duets of it with Neil Patrick Harris, and that you reprise it with another character from shrinking in the car. I am wondering if Dracula's lament is inspired by the confrontation song and lame is,

which is the kind of song equivalent of a duel between revolutionary Jean-Valgeon and Inspector Javier

who's been hunting Valgeon and wants to arrest or maybe kill him.

“Absolutely, lame as a rob was, I think, the first, my first intro into musicals,”

I used to go with my parents every year when it would come through LA to the pantages theater. And yeah, I was obsessed with it, and I know all the songs, I sing all the different characters. So yeah, I think about it all the time. But yes, the Dracula musical is definitely inspired by lame as a rob. For sure.

Great. You know, I have all the puppets. That was one of the great takeaways from forgetting ceremony. All the puppets from the Dracula musical? Yeah, from the Dracula musical, they let me have them.

And they were made by the Jim Henson company and I've got them in this like secret room in my house. That's pretty great. Yeah. We need to take a short break here. So let me reintroduce you.

My guest is Jason Seagull.

“He's nominated for an Emmy for his leading role in the series shrinking.”

The first three seasons are streaming on Apple TV.

We'll be right back. This is fresh air. When life gives you lemons, what do you get? Negative utility. You think this is Darian?

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So it's like he's hard not to celebrate with. I think I'm going to get a salad. Self-care is important. That's Bulls Eye. Find us in the npr app at maximum.org or wherever you get podcasts.

This is fresh air. Let's get back to my interview with Jason Seagull. He's nominated for an Emmy for his starring role in the comedy drama series shrinking. As the psychotherapist who's been having his own mental health crisis, because his wife died a year ago in a car crash.

So you said that you've been sober for 13 years, such as great and I want to say congratulations. Oh, thanks. But I was wondering if drinking coincided with one of those periods when you weren't working a lot and you were questioning, like,

"Is it over? You know, am I writing on my past right now?"

I think that what was kind of confusing to me was during this period when things were going really, really, really well. I was really unhappy. I was being told that I had one life in so many ways, like I was having really successful movies and a really successful TV show

and I was writing stuff and making stuff. But I was just so unhappy and I was drinking a bunch to, I don't know, you know, deal with that or. That I just felt like if this is winning life, I don't know how much longer I want to do this.

You know, it's just not, I'm not enjoying myself at all. And so I felt like I'd make a big life change. There was no inciting incident. You know, like there wasn't like a thing that happened. I just realized, "Oh, this is kidding. You just keep going on like this."

So I just was like, "I need to change everything." So I stopped drinking and I also was like, "There is this voice."

“I got discovered doing dramas, like in high school dramas, you know?”

And the performances I admired that like made me feel like alive with acting was like Edward Norton and Primal Fear. Peter Sellers and being there. Martin Sheen and Badlands and none of these were anywhere close to what I was doing, you know?

And I think that I had this feeling of like, maybe one of the reasons you are unhappy is that you're not finding out. Like you're going to be the guy who we're all familiar with who's like resentful at dinner parties, like, "Well, if I had done the revenue, I would have done this like that."

You know, who never finds out.

And so I think that that kind of big life change led me into this moment of like, let's go answer all the questions that you are not answering and that you're kind of like numbing that you're not answering.

“How do you do that? How do you find answers to those questions?”

I mean, it's so weird how the universe responds, and I'm not like a woo woo guy, you know, but end of the tour came to my desk right as I was having this moment. And it is my drama. Yeah, that's the David Foster wall.

Yeah, it's David Foster wall story. It was my chance to find out. It was about everything that I was going through. It was about a guy who was winning life according to everybody. He had written the book of the generation.

He was struggling with sobriety. And he was trying to figure out how to be happy while he was doing all of it. And I thought, well, here is your chance to find out. Like, what if you play what would Edward Norton do?

And dive into this thing in a way that you've never had to dive into a comedy.

And like, I just like prepped the way that I heard one quote real actors prep. And I got a dialect coach and I did all this stuff. And I spent like 10 years doing that of like chasing that sort of thing.

“And I think that it was like one of the most important things I ever did.”

And I've realized that maybe strategy for me is my enemy. I need to be doing what's interesting to me. Your father is a lawyer. I don't know if he's retired or not. But what kind of law did he practice?

And what did you learn from seeing him work or from people who he brought home? Who were also lawyers or maybe clients? Yeah, my dad did like an entertainment law but not like Hollywood entertainment. Like amusement parks and casinos and things like that. I think what I learned from my father is this crazy work ethic.

My dad worked harder than anyone I'd ever seen. And I actually like had the honor of doing something a minute ago. I got a house like for next stage of my journey. Caleb and I found our dream house and we're going to move in. And it has his office and it has an old timey office.

And my dad when he retired gave me the desk that he worked at for 40 years. And I just got to put it in the office.

It's been sitting in the storage unit and I finally got to put it in the office.

I had to face time and thank him and say like, hey dad, this desk is the reason I'm here. Like the work that my dad put in. I am very, very lucky. I will constantly be in awe of people who get in a bus from their small town. And I'm going to go make it in the entertainment business.

I grew up in LA and I always knew because of my parents.

That no matter what, I was going to be okay. It was an amazing way to try to do this. Is that because they were financially secure? Yeah, they were financially secure. They would always be there if I needed.

Like I knew that they would, I knew that they had me. You know what I mean? No matter what, I was safe. And it gave me the opportunity to try to fly.

“And I did, you know, but I only did, I think, because they said, like, hey, go out and go out and do it.”

You know, and my dad put in the hours to make that possible. And my mom put in the hours by raising us.

Like my mother is the most incredible woman.

And also my mom did this thing. Like she kind of accepted who I became. She showed me the muppet show that she had taped it. She taped every episode to show me the muppet show when her kid got old enough. Because like, she thought it was special.

She showed me herald and mod when I was, like, way too young to see it. You know, it was like nine years old. My mom showed me herald and mod. And showed me Peter Sellers. And like, I am definitely the most positive version of, like, a product of my parents.

Jason Seagull has been great to talk with you again. I really appreciate you coming back to the show. And congratulations on your Emmy nomination. Terry, thanks so much. It's so nice to both of us still be at it after all these years.

Pretty darn cool. Jason Seagull is nominated for an Emmy for his starring role in the series Shrinking.

The first three seasons are streaming on Apple TV.

We'll hear from several other Emmy nominees over the next couple of weeks. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, why has the United States been unable to impose its will on Iran,

“despite months of punishing attacks from the world's most powerful military force?”

We'll get some insights from Stacy Petty John, director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. [Music]

Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brinner. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Stanashewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Meyers, Ann-Ribaldonado, Lauren Crenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth.

They are Challenger, Susan Necundi, Ann-Abaumann, and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler.

“Our digital media producer is Molly Sivinezper.”

Roberta Sharot, directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. [Music] OK, so you're driving to work or you're on a walk or you're at the gym or whatever,

and you just need to clear your head. That's the perfect time to hit the play button on NPR's All-Songs Considered. It's not the news, it's not work or whatever else is weighing you down. It's just a good time with good friends and great tunes. Listen to All-Songs Considered every Tuesday in the NPR Music podcast.

While it seems like everything is being called a recession indicator these days. Yeah, like the box of hamburger helper in my pantry. Or the new Apple Neo book? Or the resurgence of press on nails or lipstick or no lipstick, I've lost track. There is only one way to know if these are actual economic warning signs though.

Listen to the indicator from planet money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.