Slight spoilers for Shrinking Season 2 are ahead. If you want to get caught up, you can stream the comedy with an Apple TV+ subscription.
On the surface, you might not think Paul and Liz have anything in common on Shrinking. For example, Liz is pretty outspoken, while Paul is quieter; Liz has no boundaries, and Paul, arguably, has too many. However, in Episode 3 of Season 2, the therapist tells Jimmy's neighbor they actually have a lot in common. So, when I interviewed Shrinking’s cast, I asked Liz actress Christa Miller and the show’s co-creator and Miller’s real-life husband of 25 years Bill Lawrence, what she has in common with the actor behind Paul, Harrison Ford.
For a bit of context, in Episode 3 of Shrinking, Paul runs into Liz and her husband Derek at his office. After seeing Liz, and addressing the fact that Derek ate his ice cream, Harrison Ford’s therapist tells Liz's partner:
Well, you’ve managed to build a nice life with someone who seems like a nightmare. No offense. She reminds me of me. I’m prickly and stubborn, and that’s before you add the Parkinson’s.
They are both "prickly," that’s certainly true. However, they’re also fiercely loyal, and once they care about someone, they’re with them until the end. While Paul would never give out rocks like Liz does to show that, their deep care for others is admirable. Bill Lawrence told me that that’s what Ford and Miller have in common too, as he said:
In real life, I would not want to be married to either of them. No, I'm joking…They are both no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is, incredibly frank, slow-to-warm people. And here's what I mean by slow to warm, it's not standoffish, it means they will look at you with a raised eyebrow until they decide that you're someone that they should trust [you], and then they are loyal to you forever. And currently, I keep a chart in my head of who I'm currently getting along better with. Right now, Harrison is slightly leading my wife.
All jokes aside, that’s so sweet to hear, and these qualities track right along with their characters.
On the surface, though, I thought these actors couldn’t be more different. Just looking at their filmographies, that seems to be the case – as Miller is known for television and comedy, like The Drew Carey Show, while Ford plays serious and heroic characters like Han Solo and Indiana Jones.
However, by watching Shrinking and interviewing those behind it, I can see the similarities. Christa Miller can too, as she answered my question with the following:
I love Harrison. Harrison and I don't suffer fools, and we both have dry senses of humor.
You can feel both those qualities in Shrinking too, which I love. If you want to see maybe the best example of them firing on all cylinders together on this front, you should return to Season 1, Episode 6 of the Apple TV+ show. It’s the one where Paul takes an edible, gets high and they both spend their time at a party calling out Brian, referring to Derek as their “waiter” and eating popsicles.
However, they also have some pretty big differences, which Miller hilariously pointed out to me by saying:
Where we differ is, Harrison likes to play pranks on people, and I'm not into pranks. But yeah, I'm obsessed with Harrison.
Harrison Ford is quite the prankster. While working on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, he and Ke Huy Quan pranked Steven Spielberg by popping into a shot with ice cream on their faces, per Empire. Along with him playing jokes on sets like that, his wife Calista Flockhart told NYT that they’ll scare one another or leave things like rubber scorpions around their house to prank each other.
Meanwhile, that is not Christa Miller’s jam.
However, it does sound like they share the best sense of humor and deep care for those they love, which you can see on full display by streaming new episodes of Shrinking as they air on the 2024 TV schedule every Wednesday on Apple TV+.
