If you get complimented by the legendary Indiana Jones or the great Han Solo, Harrison Ford himself, then it’s definitely something you’d want to treasure forever. Even if it’s NSFW, like what happened to Jason Segel, who received praise from the actor because of his, ahem, “private lightsaber.”
The “How I Met Your Mother” star appears alongside Ford in the Apple TV Plus comedy series Shrinking. The duo make a remarkable team, with The Daily Show host Desi Lydic commenting in an interview that their “chemistry is so good” in the series and that they have this “great buddy comedy dynamic” despite their 38-year age gap.
Ford, 82, is best known as a thinking man’s action hero, having appeared in several action films like Blade Runner 2049, Star Wars, and more. Segel, 44, on the other hand, is a comedian at heart. So how does a comedian talk an action star into doing comedy?
Turns out, Ford didn’t need that much convincing. All it took was that one memorable scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall where Segel had to flaunt his precious gems on camera. The comedian fondly recalled Ford’s response when Lydic asked, “How did you get him to sign on to do comedy? Did he see your full-frontal scene in Finding Sarah Marshall?”
“He was not that familiar with me and so they said you should watch Forgetting Sarah Marshall you get a sense of what this guy does. And apparently, he went off and he watched it and he texted Bill Lawrence [TV producer and screenwriter], ‘I’m in. Btw, good d**k.’
A hilariously proud Segel revealed that he has Ford’s text message printed and framed. Well, why not right? It is, after all, from the great Harrison Ford and would make a great keepsake for posterity’s sake. Lydic responded in jest, “I feel like you could almost retire after that….You got Harrison Ford to compliment your d**k.”
In the 2008 rom-com, Segel, who plays Peter Bretter, had to go fully nude for a completely inappropriate breakup scene with Sarah Marshall, played by the lovely Kristen Bell. Fresh from a shower with a towel wrapped around his waist, he came out to see her standing in his living room smiling at him. Thinking she was there for some afternoon delights, he removed the towel and flaunted his naked self to her.
On the contrary, she was there to call it quits because of another man. He filmed this whole scene in his, ahem, “birthday suit” so you can just imagine how embarrassingly funny and awkward it must have been for the cast and crew involved (you can check a censored version of this scene and a BTS on YouTube). Who knew it would one day lead to a rather wicked twist of luck by making Ford agree to be in “Shrinking.”
In the Emmy-nominated series, Ford plays gruff senior therapist Dr. Paul Rhoades who is suffering from Parkinson’s disease. He is colleagues with Segel’s Jimmy Laird at the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Center. Laird is mourning the death of his wife from a car accident until he decides to intervene in his patients’ personal lives to expedite finding solutions to their problems. Ignoring ethics, he breaks the rules and tells his patients exactly what he thinks, making huge changes to their lives in the process and inadvertently his own.
Shrinking premiered in 2023 on Jan. 27 and has since received rave reviews. So much so that Apple TV Plus renewed it for a third season just a day after its second season was released on Oct. 16, 2024.