Michael Urie on Shrinking Season 3, That Les Mis Moment and Ugly Betty

Take a look at the original trailer for season one of Apple TV’s Shrinking, and you won’t see many similarities to the comedy it has become after three seasons — the latest of which concluded this week. There’s a lot of crying. A lot of confrontation. And absolutely zero Michael Urie.

The actor, who’s since won a Critics Choice Award and been nominated for an Actor Award and an Emmy for his work as Brian on the series, was barely a cameo in the pilot. He quickly cemented himself in the architecture of the show that’s become, well, much more of a comedy as it’s evolved.

Speaking during a recent episode of The Hollywood Reporter podcast I’m Having an Episode (Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple), Urie talked about how the unexpected course Shrinking has taken since it premiered — and why he’s happy to stay in the dark about where it goes next.

You’re very much a New York actor. You live there. You’ve done three Broadway shows in the past 15 months alone. How does your TV work always end up being in L.A.?

What can I say? I like the miles. My joke is I can’t get arrested on Law & Order — literally. Sometimes I watch The Gilded Age, and it’s so many people I know that I imagine any second I might walk in. I’ll watch, and I’m like, “Am I in this? Did I do this?” But no luck there. 

I imagine that the FOMO for The Gilded Age is very real for someone in your position.

I would love to be wearing those clothes and saying those words and hanging out on set with all those people. It just looks like the coolest, most fun job. Alas. They know I’m around. They’re not picking me for a reason. I like to imagine that I could do anything. The truth is there’s a little thing called typecasting in this world. I don’t know, I’ve never made the cut for those kinds of shows.

Do you feel that typecasting has been an issue in your career?

When I was first out of school, we did a big showcase and met with casting directors and managers and agents. I remember meeting with one casting director and they asked me, “Well, what do you see yourself doing?” I was like, “I just don’t want to be typecast.” This casting director very wisely said, “You can’t get cast until you’re typecast.” That was a huge awakening. If you’re lucky, you’re in it long enough and you have the opportunity to show all your different sides, you can kind of break out of that. You can be a Sean Penn, who really does do very different things. But I’ve played a lot of mean gay guys. And now I’m playing a nice one on Shrinking.

Shrinking has changed so much, season to season. If you go back to the pilot or the way that show was initially marketed, a viewer would never expect that we’d be watching the version of the show that it is today. It’s much lighter. How much of that was communicated with you all at the start?

When I got my audition, they sent me the script to the first episode. But my character really didn’t show up in the first episode. You see me across the street, pumping gas. In episode two, I show up. So all my audition material was from episode two … but I did not get the whole script. So I read episode one and I was like, “This is so devastating and heartbreaking. It’s moving and funny but also very heavy.” And then, [in episode two,] my scenes were hilarious. I thought, “OK, so there’s definitely going to be an evolution here.” It was very clear from the beginning. And Jason Segel’s not just going to be sad in a Bill Lawrence show.

A lot of Bill’s shows do find their way to that “close-knit friend group, drinking wine” hang vibe.

I knew Scrubs and Ted Lasso. These shows contain multitudes. Even Scrubs, which is sort of a heightened reality, goes to beautiful emotional places. I knew that was what was coming down the pike for Shrinking, but I don’t remember if it was like, “Eventually this is going to be a hangout comedy with pathos.” Somebody called it a grief comedy. There have been a few different isms, but I couldn’t have predicted that it would evolve this much. I love that it’s really grown. 

Do you ever seek out information on what’s planned? Looking back, I doubt anyone would have guessed your character would be adopting a baby.

I probably could get more intel than I do get. They’re not forthcoming. Sometimes, Bill will be like, “Just so you know, we’re writing you a really long monologue. It’s coming. We’re going to try to get you as soon as possible so you can start learning it.” Or, “Hey, do you know this song from Les Mis?” 

OK, we do need to discuss this scene. There’s a driving sequence in season three, during which you and Jason sing both parts of “The Confrontation” from Les Mis while Harrison Ford is in the backseat just looking bewildered. Is it true Harrison wasn’t actually prepped for that? 

In the dialogue, it only said “Jimmy and Brian sing ‘The Confrontation’ from Les Mis.” That’s all. And I’m pretty sure Harrison had no idea what that was. He must have known what Les Mis was, but he certainly didn’t know that we were going to sing the entire thing. He’s so comfortable in front of the camera. He’s just so used to being on camera that I think he loved the spontaneity of that. The first time I watched it — they sent me the dailies, which they don’t do, but that was a special occasion — I couldn’t take my eyes off Harrison. Jason and I are in the front seat going for it, giving it our all, singing to the back of the house and having the best time. We were giddy for weeks about that. We knew it was coming and we would practice when Harrison wasn’t around. When I watched it, all I could look at is Harrison because he’s in the back going through every human emotion. He’s confused. He’s scared for his safety. He’s delighted by us. He loves us. He goes through everything. 

You’ve worked a lot of generational talents, but Harrison is a true movie star. What have you learned watching him on set? 

That kind of acting, you really get a whole range with just his face — and he’s not overdoing it. He’s just being real. He’s not mugging, like I do. He’s just behaving, and that’s why he’s a movie star. That’s why you’ll watch his face for two hours on a giant screen, because it’s so subtle and it’s so human. I’ve learned so much from him. I remember, early on Ugly Betty, learning from Vanessa Williams about where the cameras were and how to walk a red carpet. I learned from Judith Light about how to talk to a fan, how to give an interview. I learned from Tony Plana, who played Betty’s Dad, how to appreciate the moment you’re in because it’s not always this good. 

I saw Tony in something very recently and remember thinking, “Wow, that man has not aged in all the decades I’ve seen him pop up in everything.”

Tony has been in every TV show ever from the ’80s and ’90s and up until now. He’s one of our great character actors. And he’s looked the same for 40 years. He’d been on a million shows and [on Ugly Betty], he was like, “This is the real deal.” A lot of us that were having our big breaks on that show. We were so lucky to have Vanessa, Judith and Tony around to say, “Oh no, this is special. Don’t close your eyes for a second, because it’s not always like this.” And I’ve been lucky. I’ve been on very nice, happy sets and I’ve been in shows that have good material, shows about something. So, I’m so great. 

Given it was the big break for so many in the cast, I imagine there was a big learning curve on Ugly Betty. 

Because I come from the theater, and I’m used to cheating to the audience, every time they move the camera, I would cheat to wherever the camera was. [Editor’s note: “Cheating” is when an actor angles their bodies and faces toward the audience.] And that’s the dumbest thing in the world! When I saw it on TV. I was like, “Oh my God, what am I doing?” I can’t believe that an editor didn’t come and slap me across the face and say, “Stop turning to the camera.”

Was there a point in the last two decades when you realized that Ugly Betty really had legs, that it would still come up in most of the interviews you do?

We were at a table read, maybe the show hadn’t even aired yet and one of the producers said, “We’ve got really good news. America [Ferrera] and Salma [Hayek Pinault] are going to be on Oprah to talk about the show.” And I remember Jim Parriott, one of the executive producers, saying, “This is huge.” And then the show won the Golden Globe, America won the Emmy and the SAG Award. A lot of good stuff happened that first year, but in terms of when I realized that it would last —  that I would be talking about it 20 years after shooting the pilot, which is crazy — I’m not sure. When you watch the show back, there’s a few things here and there that you’re like, “Oh, well, they wouldn’t do that now.” But, mostly, it was really ahead of its time. It’s so diverse and so queer, and it looked so pretty. It was so vibrant and beautiful. The good guys won and the bad guys lost. And Betty was such an amazing character, such an inspiration. And this still happens all the time: Somebody will come up to me with tears in their eyes at the end of the job and they’ll be like, “I just wanted to say to you how much that show means to me.” It happens all the time to all of us.