{"id":88562,"date":"2025-08-17T02:21:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T02:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/88562\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T02:21:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T02:21:09","slug":"jessica-williams-shrinking-interview-season-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/88562\/","title":{"rendered":"Jessica Williams ‘Shrinking’ Interview: Season 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe Emmy-nominated series, Shrinking, created by Bill Lawrence<\/a>, Jason Segel<\/a> and Brett Goldstein<\/a>, follows grieving therapist Jimmy (Segel), who starts to break the rules and tell his clients exactly what he thinks. Ignoring his training and ethics, he finds himself making tumultuous changes to people\u2019s lives, including his own.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeason 2 begins with the unraveling of the semi-messy relationship between Jimmy and his longtime friend and therapist colleague Gaby (Jessica Williams<\/a>), who start hooking up in the first season. After some tough-love and convincing from her closest friends to remain platonic with Jimmy, a new love interest named Derek (Damon Wayans Jr.) enters the friend group, leading to challenging new ways for Gabby to reflect on her past relationships and morals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, Williams explains Gaby\u2019s relationship woes, her own self-care routine, much needed character conversations and why the series relates to so many people.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: So, are we not supposed to be rooting for Jimmy and Gaby? Because I know Jimmy is self-absorbed, but they do have good chemistry. I liked them together.<\/p>\n

\n\tJESSICA WILLIAMS: I know, right? It\u2019s so funny because people do come up to me and they\u2019re like, \u201cWhat\u2019s the deal with Jimmy and Gaby? No, Jimmy and Gaby or Yes, Jimmy and Gaby.\u201d As if I were in any way involved in the process, I appreciate it. There\u2019s nothing I can say other than it being a really funny relationship. I think people sleep together all the time, and it can either mean something or it doesn\u2019t. But either way, I feel like this show is cool for sometimes having people sleep together or people not knowing what\u2019s going to happen and either moving on or circling back. I do know what happens in Season 3, and I cannot wait for you guys to see it and talk about it. But all of this is something you need to take up with Bill Lawrence, Brett Goldstein and Jason Siegel. Not for little ol\u2019 me who is currently an actor on the show. But I do understand needing to express that sentiment about them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Would you like to tell the audience why Derek 2, played by Damon Wayans Jr., is the right choice for Gaby right now? I do like how the characters balance each other out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWILLIAMS: Yes, I would. Derek is someone who, I think, has his shit together more than Gaby. And I think Gaby, as a therapist, is such a caretaker in her relationships. As a therapist, she often has the right answers for her clients, but in this relationship, she\u2019s not necessarily the one who has it more together. She\u2019s a bit more afraid. She\u2019s already been married and divorced. She\u2019s got things in her personal life that she either needs to figure out or not and move on from the relationship. So, Derek is a great example of that for her. It presents conflict in a cool way for her in this storyline, so it\u2019s been fun to plan.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Speaking of conflict, Louis and Gaby don\u2019t have a conversation in the entirety of Season 2. Was that intentional for you and Brett Goldstein?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWILLIAMS: Them not speaking was important to me, because I always felt like Gaby would feel some type of way about meeting him. I think she would process that differently than Jimmy and Alice\u2019s characters. We also ended up finagling why Gaby has no contact with Louie for that specific reason. All I can say is stay tuned for Season 3, because we do get to have Brett back for those things we couldn\u2019t fit into Season 2. I can\u2019t promise, but hopefully, there\u2019s a really much-needed conversation between Gaby and Louie in Season 3.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE:\u00a0 What is your self-care routine? How do you keep yourself grounded in this industry?<\/p>\n

\n\tWILLIAMS: I\u2019m lucky. I live in Eagle Rock, and I grew up in LA. I went to Cal State Long Beach, so I still have my day ones, my day zeros of people that I\u2019ve known from middle school, high school and college. And those friends are still fun. They just see me as Jessica, who happens to have this weird job. So, I keep them in my orbit all the time. Another thing that keeps me grounded is not believing I am as bad as people say I am online. Or even as great as people say that I am online. I keep a nice, happy medium and that works for me. This works for self-care because then I\u2019m not as dependent on other people\u2019s thoughts and feelings, which is really critical for me and my well-being.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso, I just like to have fun and be playful. I really do love to laugh. I have playful friends, and we laugh around my house all the time. I like to eat good food too. I try not to take this business as seriously, especially as a Black actress who is 6 feet tall. Like, if I took this industry so seriously, I don\u2019t think I\u2019d live a really fulfilling life. It\u2019s all about balance.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: What does this Emmy nomination for yourself and the show mean to you? What do you think the audience is responding to?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t
WILLIAMS: I think one of the things that people really love about the show, or what I get from this show myself, from the second season especially, is that they wish they knew these characters. They wish they knew Derek [Ted McGinley], Brian [Michael Urie], Jimmy, Paul [Harrison Ford], etc., and they wish they could hang out with these people. And I think people are really responding to the found family aspect of the show. Sometimes you just want a cozy show like Cheers, which is one of the greatest shows of all time, where you show up and you know these characters and you fall in love with them. <\/p>\n

\n\tI think people are responding to the aspect of these people who are neighbors and coworkers, just flowing in and out of each other\u2019s lives, making mistakes, overstepping boundaries, clarifying boundaries, and apologizing to each other. I know behind the scenes, the actors and I all really love and respect each other. This goes to the crew as well. All of the crew, our directors and writers, there\u2019s so much love there. And I hope that comes through on the screen because we\u2019re a real touchy-feeling show. After all, we\u2019re a show that\u2019s about therapy. Also, we\u2019re really in tune with each other. Our casting directors got nominated for casting, and this really is a strong ensemble of a show, and I think there is just such fun chemistry between us that I think people really respond to that, as well. And I know for me to play Gaby, I would not be as good if I didn\u2019t have so many incredible actors and actresses that I got to work with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Emmy-nominated series, Shrinking, created by Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel and Brett Goldstein, follows grieving therapist Jimmy (Segel),…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[5896,60737,60738,60739,88,27130,60740,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-88562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-apple-tv","9":"tag-awardsdialogue","10":"tag-bill-lawrence","11":"tag-brett-goldstein","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-jason-segel","14":"tag-jessica-williams","15":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}