Shrinking has brought Michael J. Fox back to the screen, and in a recent interview the beloved star of Back to the Future explained what specifically convinced him to want to act in the Apple TV+ series starring Jason Segel and Harrison Ford.
Why Shrinking Made Michael J. Fox Want to Return to Acting
Michael J. Fox believed he had essentially closed the door on acting, but then Shrinking arrived, offering him a new perspective. Six years after his last on-screen appearance, Fox wanted to give it another try, and Shrinking is to credit. In an interview with People, he shared the difficulties caused by Parkinson’s-related complications: “A new variable emerged: my ability to memorize lines. There’s a time for everything, and the era of 12-hour workdays was behind me.”
In Shrinking, however, his physical challenges were integrated into the role: “This new character allows me to show up on set as myself. I could harness my present emotions and channel them into the scene.”
In the past, he had appeared in two episodes of The Good Fight in 2020, but that experience had led him to doubt his own memorization abilities: “I would have to read pages and pages of legal language. I couldn’t do it. I had just watched one of my favorite films, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, and there was a fantastic scene where Leo [DiCaprio] returns to his room and vents in front of the mirror, going mad, drinking and crying over his inability to memorize the lines. I found myself, in a similar fashion, in front of a mirror and thought: Hmm! I can’t do this. I can’t go on like this,” he told the Los Angeles Times.
Regarding Shrinking, Michael J. Fox admitted that he had a lot of fun working alongside Harrison Ford, and Ford, in another interview, shared his view on the colleague: “He is an incredibly thoughtful, compassionate, wise, and kind person, endowed with great charisma. He was very generous in offering me his friendship. I didn’t know him at all, so I was a bit nervous about meeting him. But he was so generous and kind to me that he gave me a certain sense of security, which is all you have in these cases.” In the Apple TV+ series, Michael J. Fox plays Gerry, a Parkinson’s patient who interacts with Paul.
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