Shrinking Co-Creator Bill Lawrence On Finding Comedy In Grief [Exclusive Interview]

Bill Lawrence isn't all about feel-good television. The creator, known for "Cougar Town," "Scrubs," and "Ted Lasso," doesn't shy away from uncomfortable feelings in his comfort shows. Take, for instance, his new Apple series "Shrinking," which is a comedy that deals death and grief. As Lawrence told us in a recent interview, that wouldn't have been an easy pitch a few years ago. 

Lawrence co-created the show with his "Ted Lasso" collaborator Brett Goldstein and actor Jason Segel. "Shrinking" is about therapists helping their patients as they try to put their own lives together, as well. It's not all laughs and doesn't result in triumphant endings, but it's also silly and funny in the way audiences expect from Lawrence shows. In the lead-up to the series premiere, the writer told us about how he strikes the balance between the sweet and the sour in his comedies.

Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Hey Mr. Lawrence, how are you?

Hey, Jack. First of all, it's Bill, Jack, because you just made me feel like I'm a thousand years old. Secondly, this is very cool because I'm still a director at heart. Symmetrically, you have good hair, but it matches up perfectly with the handbag in the painting behind you. It would be like a Wes Anderson shot from one of his movies. It's awesome. Although Wes Anderson, he would put something like that in the bottom left, so it was perfect symmetry, but it's awesome.

[Laughs] Thank you for complimenting my hair.

That's the weirdest start to any of the interviews I've done. It doesn't count as your time. I'm sorry.

[Laughs] No, let's hope it sets the tone for the rest of this interview.

There we go, man. There we go.

Well, to return the compliment, I'll just say going back to "Scrubs" and now "Shrinking," your work brings me a lot of happiness.

Hey, that is super kind. I'm not good at accepting compliments. I really appreciate it. I'll do my shame spiral off camera.

I think a part of the reason why these comedies are appealing is that they're really just about getting through the day.

Yeah.

What has been drawing you to that idea for over 20 years?

I know. Well, look man, I always feel hesitant to talk about this because I would be remiss if I didn't say I am the luckiest guy on the planet. I get paid to write silly jokes and look at Indiana Jones and Marty McFly back in the day, you know what I mean, and hang around young people that make me feel relevant on a writing staff because they're paid to talk to me in ways that my own children won't. It's awesome.

I will say the one thing that connects us all, especially now that the world's been such a dumpster fire for five years, is that everybody, I think ... if you said to anybody, "Hey, how do you wake up and get through the day?", there's not a person out there that would go, "What are you talking about? Life's awesome." Everybody's just been grinding a little bit.

It's what I like to write about because, especially with Brett and Jason, I generally cope by laughing my way through it. It's bleak, but my dad is only 75 years old. He has something called Lewy bodies, which is what Robin Williams had. It's a degenerative hallucination kind of dementia. He's there sometimes. He's not there sometimes. But when he is there, we laugh about it and joke about it in ways that I think if you stepped into that world, you'd be like, "What the hell are you doing?" I'd have to be like, "It's okay. It's okay. He digs it," and that's the world I like to write about generally.

To continue on that subject, this is a funny comedy about grief. Is that an easy or difficult pitch?

Yeah, there's a stand-up I loved. He was like, "I want to be with the guy that pitched 'Hogan's Heroes.' It's a Nazi war camp and it's a comedy." And for me, the fun thing about this show was going out and literally saying, "Hey, Jason Segel, he's here with me. His [character's] wife died. He's doing a lot of drugs and boozing, behaving badly. He's a sh***y father to a girl that he's disconnected from, and it's a comedy," and people didn't kick us out of the room. I will tell you without exaggeration, if I had tried to pitch that when I started my career back in the "Spin City" days, everybody would've been like, "Go write an independent movie, man. We're not doing this stuff." It's so fun to get to live in these worlds now.

"Scrubs," that confronted death constantly, but you'd have these wildly slapstick moments. What is your relationship between comedy and death? How can they work together? How can't they work together?

If you want to challenge yourself as a writer ... look, it's so shallow to say, but there are not a ton of new ideas. It's ultimately about execution. There have just been so many influences before us. I'll even tell you my favorite one, I was just absolutely obsessed with "M*A*S*H," a show that takes place in the Korean War, in surgery, people are dying, and it's so funny and silly sometimes and so heartbreaking the other times.

The fun of it is I gravitate to movies and TV shows that do that tightrope of walking along between broad, silly comedy and emotional depth. By the way, some horror movies even do now. I love that genre of horror-comedy where I'm like, "Man, if you do too much of the comedy, the horror doesn't work. If you do too much of the horror, I'm not down with laughing." I don't know how they do it.

It's such a fun challenge because if it works — like there are "Scrubs" episodes that I could still watch and go, "Oh man, we nailed it." If it doesn't work, it's an absolute painful disaster, inauthentic to watch. It's like watching somebody forget the words to the national anthem. It's just really tough, but it's just the stuff I've always loved writing about.

In the case of "Shrinking," the patients are never the butt of any of the jokes. Is that a part of the trick of making it all work?

It is. And if this was a doctor-patient show, it'd be a different show. I mean, most of these moments of real emotional depth and even counseling and caretaking come between father and daughter, neighbor and friend, co-worker and co-worker. The one spoiler, I haven't said it, but I don't care because it's not a huge one: All the patients in that beginning montage are the patients that you follow for the year. That's how the show works. We treat them all very seriously. If there's any in the episodes they gave you that you haven't seen yet, you will see them. And so, those are the stories that lay out through the whole thing.

What were some questions you had on your mind you wanted to explore in "Shrinking"?

The biggest thing is I think there's a tidiness to shows like this, if you're not careful — that somebody fixes everything and everybody then moves along with their problems solved. That was the biggest question for us, is all the therapists that we consulted with said, "Yes, you can do this. Yes, there are schools of people that are doing it. But if you want to be authentic, there have to be consequences and they can't just be good ones, because it's high risk, high reward. The reason a lot of therapists don't do anything like this is because of the negative consequences." And the question for us — what are the negative consequences? — became what defined this series.

The thing I haven't spoken about a lot, which was cool, was when we came up with the idea because of those interviews ... everybody that watches TV is so savvy. We wanted the pilot to end like a show that someone like you has seen a thousand times of when you go, "Oh, he made it to the game on time and his daughter looks over and smiles and it's slow motion and nice music's playing. It's going to end like a traditional TV show." And then, thanks to these therapists, we go, "Oh no, here comes the consequences walking across the field." It's a cool story trick, and it was given to us by professionals.

I also imagine it's great for a writer, because I've heard a lot of comedy writers say, "At the end everything needs to go back into place," but with this subject, you can end on the worse note.

Exactly. And I think if you're prepared for that, it's part of the fun and you get to surprise people a little bit.

People really respond to the optimism in your work. How do you find people react to the optimism in the shows you make now versus 15 years ago? Do you find it different?

Yeah, the funny thing about TV writing is people being very kind to me about this show. I'm self-aware enough to know that people had periods where they dug what I liked to do, and then they didn't like it and then they dug it again and they didn't like it. I have a short window now to make stuff before people are like, "Have you seen that hacky new Bill Lawrence show where everybody's optimistic?" You know what I mean? It's okay. It's the world I live in, but it's also what gets me through it.

Even in this show, if you're talking about grief, as somebody that's been around it a good share, one of the ways we pitch this show is watching someone deal with grief and get to a crossroads. Harrison Ford's character says it: "You're either going to come out the other side into the light or you're going to let it bury and drown." I hope people find some community and some solace and the optimistic hope that you can get through it.

To end with a slightly random question, did you enjoy the "Ted Lasso" shoutout on the recent season of "The White Lotus"?

Yeah, man, I love that stuff. There's a community out here and I'm probably inviting something that ... be careful what you wish for. I remember when Seth [MacFarlane] on "Family Guy" was taking shots at "Scrubs" and then on "Community," Dan Harmon had Abed, who loved "Cougar Town." So I think it's so fun, because at heart, I'm a nerd. I love TV. I watch it constantly. So as a fan nerd of that show and of Mike White, I was like, "Yeah!" It doesn't mean I want to see people making jokes in every show next week, but "Community" is a good example. I'll give everybody a cool Easter egg to go look for. 

Abed loved "Cougar Town." He told a story on "Community" about going and being an extra on the show during the hiatus and how crazy it was. I saw that. I immediately called up Dan, and they sent Danny Pudi over. There's an episode of "Cougar Town" where he acts out the story he told on "Community." Not everybody knows that, even though they're on different networks and we didn't ask permission. I love that stuff.

"Shrinking" is now available to stream on Apple TV+.