Jason Segel’s Jimmy Laird is about to up the quantity of gruff father figures active in his life considerably when Shrinking comes back for its next season: Deadline reports that Jeff Daniels has signed on for a guest star role in the Apple TV+ comedy, where he’ll play the father of Segel’s frequently dysfunctional therapist.
The question, of course, is which Jeff Daniels we’ll get when the Bill Lawrence series comes back for its third season. Sure, most of his roles in recent years have fallen pretty firmly into the “Worst. Generation. Ever.” bucket, but this is the guy who cut completely loose in Dumb And Dumber once upon a time. Given that Shrinking is comfortable getting real with its characters on a pretty regular basis (especially when it comes to familial complications), we’re not expecting full-on silliness, but it would be nice to see Daniels break out of some of his more aggressively dour recent roles like A Man In Full and American Rust. (That is, after all, at least part of the appeal of having Harrison Ford star on the series, flexing his comedy muscles alongside his character’s heavier duties.)
There’s no word yet on when season 3 of Shrinking will arrive on Apple TV+; its second season finished out last December, so we’ll hopefully be getting an update on dates soon. (Casting Daniels presumably means plans for filming are getting underway.) In addition to Segel and Ford, the series—about a therapist who begins bluntly telling his patients what he thinks they should do, causing ripples in both his professional and personal life—also stars Jessica Williams, Luke Tennie, Michael Urie, Lukita Maxwell, Christa Miller, and Ted McGinley.
