Spoilers for Season 2 of Shrinking are ahead. If you haven’t seen it, you can stream it with an Apple TV+ subscription.
Shrinking's final episode on the 2024 TV schedule left us with so many reasons to cry and smile. However, Harrison Ford's big speech about what he's thankful for was what caused both things to happen simultaneously. It was a candid, genuine and raw scene where his character Paul finally dropped his walls and told everyone how he felt, and it didn't just leave me in tears, the whole cast was crying too.
In the Thanksgiving scene, Paul stood up to say what he was thankful for and tearfully explained that the road he’s on is only going to get tougher. However, while that’s the harsh reality, he expressed his gratitude and love for everyone in that room, telling them he appreciates their presence and that he’s “leaning” on them. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it, between watching Harrison Ford tear up and understanding the reality of his character’s situation, this speech was incredibly moving.
For Lukita Maxwell, who plays Alice, it was extra emotional because of her personal connection to Parkinson’s, as she told me the following during an interview with CinemaBlend:
Everyone was crying. My grandmother passed away and had Parkinson's. My grandmother passed away a couple years ago, and she had Parkinson's, and she never talked about her emotions and how she was feeling dealing with her illness. And I mean, that's the beauty of storytelling and good writing; I felt a catharsis watching Harrison say these things and talk about his fears and his hopes. And he's Harrison Ford. So it just was an incredibly poignant moment for everybody on set. Everybody was crying.
I totally understand where Maxwell is coming from, because I’ve also lost loved ones to illness and cancer. While it’s hard to be vulnerable and talk about how hard this is, it’s important and healthy. So, seeing Paul have the courage to do it was profoundly moving.
Maxwell also told me that outside of her personal connection to the moment, watching her on-screen dad, Jason Segel, watch Harrison Ford deliver this candid speech made her break too. She said:
Harrison's performance made me emotional, but also watching Jason react to Harrison's acting, that's what broke me.
Watching Jimmy watch Paul also broke me, because he was facing the mortality of this man and mentor whom he adores. Michael Urie also cited that as a reason why he found the moment so touching, because “Jimmy is looking at his mentor and seeing finality.” And that point was also amplified by Urie’s own connection to Ford.
During my chat with the Brian actor, he told me he found Paul’s speech emotional because he was connecting it back to Harrison Ford. Urie is a lifelong fan of the actor, and seeing him give “the performance of a lifetime” while talking about the rest of his life and accepting the “inevitability” made him emotional, as he explained:
I've seen, if not every movie, then like 90% of his movies, and I’ve never seen him be better than [playing Paul]. He's always great. But that was so deep. And he's 82, and he's still going strong with no signs of slowing down. But there's an inevitability when you hear him talk about that, when you start to think about when he stops and when he's done and when he slows down, and it was very moving.
It truly is very moving, because like Paul, Harrison Ford is working and thriving to this day and it’s kind of unimaginable to picture him not doing this anymore. However, that is how life works, and thinking about that really makes the emotions bubble up.
Along with the meaning of this speech, the Brian actor told me Ford didn’t just do his scene when the camera was on him at 100%, he did that for every take, and that also made him emotional:
The other thing that was really moving about that day was that he was good every time. He had to do that over and over again. And he was good even when the camera wasn't on him. He was giving us a beautiful performance to react to.
Overall, this scene is one of the most tearjerking and dramatic scenes in this comedy, because it explicitly addresses this struggle Paul has been internalizing for such a long time. Harrison Ford also turned in, as Urie put it, a “performance of a lifetime,” and seeing him be so candid and expressive when he's normally quite stoic and reserved added to the impact of this speech.
It’s moments like this that move both viewers and the cast that make Shrinking one of Apple TV+’s best shows and my favorite series of the year. This show knows how to tap into very real emotions, situations and challenges that everyone faces, and they do so in a caring and relatable way. This scene of Paul saying what he's grateful for is a prime and tearjerking example of exactly that.
