Big spoilers for Shrinking Season 2, Episode 3 are ahead. If you aren’t caught up, you can stream the comedy with an Apple TV+ subscription.
After Jimmy’s explosive moment with the drunk driver who killed his wife in Shrinking’s Season 2 premiere, Alice went to confront the character played by Brett Goldstein in Episode 3. Despite Paul telling her not to do it, Lukita Maxwell’s character needed to confront this man, and what followed was a very intense moment. So, during CinemaBlend’s interviews with the Shrinking cast ahead of its premiere on the 2024 TV schedule, I asked the Alice actress about filming her confrontation with the Ted Lasso star.
When it was announced that Brett Goldstein would join Shrinking’s ensemble, his character was kept a secret. Then, in the first episode, it was revealed that the co-creator of the comedy was playing the man who hit Alice’s mom. Currently, both Alice and her dad are dealing with the grief of that loss, and running into the man who caused it has provoked both of them to lash out. Speaking about that, Lukita Maxwell told me that her scene with Goldstein was intense, saying:
Shooting that scene where she confronts Louis for the first time was intense. I think Brett and I love each other very much. I think that we have a very strong acting connection.
While Shrinking handles some dramatic moments comedically, this is not one of them. It is incredibly serious. In the scene, Alice drives to the coffee shop Louis works at to talk to him. After they run into each other, and she asks him if he remembers her, he immediately sits down to chat. Once he starts to say he’d been wanting to have a conversation with her, she yells “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” and storms out.
Reflecting back on what it was like to shoot the scene, Maxwell told me that it took longer than expected because of a lightning storm. She said:
I'm thinking back to that day, and I'm just remembering now that there was a lightning storm in the middle of shooting that scene. So I remember we were shooting it wide and getting all of the bigger coverage first. And then as we were getting tighter, I think, like, halfway through when we were moving in, there was a lightning strike like five miles away from the Warner Brothers lot. So we all had to stop working, and everybody had this tension that they were still holding. And then we had to just wait it out for a couple hours, and then go back in, and dive back into the scene with tighter coverage. And that was, you know, the first big scene that I had shot with Brett.
So, along with it generally being a tense situation to film, the weather added an extra layer of drama. I’d imagine that holding all that tension and anger Alice was feeling had to be difficult. I also assume that the sadness and guilt Louis was carrying was hard to maintain as well. Although, I also feel like the rainy vibes might have added to the dark scene too.
However, Lukita Maxwell made it very clear that while it was intense to film this important turning point in Alice’s story, she also “loved” it and working with Brett Goldstein.
Shrinking is one of Apple TV+’s best shows, because it balances the humor and the drama so well, and this scene was a perfect example of it leaning really hard into its serious side. Now, it’ll be interesting to see how Alice is impacted by this interaction and how Louis continues to show up in the new season.
To see all that go down, and to go back and watch this pivotal moment, you can stream Shrinking right now on Apple TV+ and catch new episodes every Wednesday.
