After “Shrinking” star Jason Segel wrapped nine seasons of the multi-cam sitcom “How I Met Your Mother” in 2014, he decided he wanted to break out of his comedy mold. But Segel said he was met with resistance from the industry.
“[It] was like a decade of being on one show and doing a bunch of romantic comedies and stuff, I decided I wanted to see if I was good at dramas, and so I, like, dove in hard,” Segel said during THR’s Comedy Actor Roundtable. And I thought, ‘Look out world. Here comes me doing drama.’ And it turns out nobody gives a shit.”
Then he did the 2015 film “The End of the Tour,” where he played the late novelist David Foster Wallace, which earned Segel excellent reviews. Richard Lawson wrote in Vanity Fair, “Segel handles Wallace’s intricate, discursive speech with remarkable dexterity, putting Wallace’s brilliant, troubled mind on display for all of us to admire, while still managing to play a human being.”
At the time, Segel said, “I wanted to do something different. I needed to make a change. If I’m going to do this for 50 more years, it has to be reflective of what I’m feeling.”
Looking back on the experience today, he said, “Nobody saw [the movie], but I felt like, ‘You can do it.’ And so that was important for me, because I didn’t want to be the guy who sat his whole life wondering if he could do something.”
Segel remembered that “The End of the Tour” director James Ponsoldt told him, “Every time you do comedy, I can tell you want to kill yourself.” “A Man on the Inside” star Ted Danson, who also participated in the roundtable, added, “if you’re really good at comedy, I think you also have a sadness that you’re in touch with.”
Several years after “The End of the World,” Segel moved to the quaint hamlet of Ojai, California. One day, a friend of “Shrinking” producer Bill Lawrence happened to see Segel walking in town.
“I’m Big Bird. I walk around. I wave at everybody. I’m kind of a town mascot,” he explained, saying that a man saw him from across the street and texted Lawrence saying, “‘Hey, Jason Segel seems like a happy guy. Let’s work with him.’”
Ultimately, Segel has found that a balance between comedy and drama is what he most responds to in his projects. He calls James L. Brooks “the king” of this approach, noting that his films make clear that “life is complicated.”
“There aren’t heroes and villains, and you cry through the funny stuff and laugh through the tough stuff,” he explained.
Watch the full THR discussion below:
