LOS ANGELES — Jason Segel is sitting at a table outside Jones Coffee on Mission Street in South Pasadena, a short walk from his home — too short, in fact, if he's hoping to make much of a dent in the 15,000 steps he needs to do today as part of an exercise program he just started with his girlfriend. He comes here from time to time. A string quartet sets up and plays on Sunday, pretty dreamy even with the Metro trains clanging through every few minutes.
Segel uses the word "calm" to describe his days in South Pas, which is essentially a more L.A.-centric version of his life at his primary residence in Ojai, the laid-back Ventura County town where he moved shortly after finishing a nine-year stint starring in the CBS sitcom "How I Met Your Mother." There, Segel lives in a little stone house in the middle of an orange grove, which he has absolutely nothing to do with, other than enjoying the fruit. It looks like the kind of place you'd see in a movie about a writer getting away from it all to write his memoir.
Segel first lived in Ojai when he was preparing to make "The End of the Tour," the poignant portrait of writer David Foster Wallace. He was terrified he was out of his depth, unsure how to prepare. He kept asking: "What would Edward Norton do?" And one of the answers was: "Move to the middle of nowhere so you can get out of your own head." Segel liked Ojai so much that he decided to stay.
"Being there had the really interesting side-effect of realizing — after six weeks time, mind you — that, 'Oh, my gosh. I finally feel calm,'" Segel says. "And it occurred to me that when you're doing this job and living in L.A., you're never leaving campus." He laughs. "So it was like this whole new experience to realize that when someone outside of Hollywood asks, 'What are you up to?' they mean, like, right now. So the answer is: 'Oh. I'm on my way to the grocery store,' not 'I have three projects in development.'"
Segel stands 6-foot-4 and — this is his description, but it's not wrong — "walks around the world like Big Bird." He has also been acting for 25 years, so he gets recognized a lot. It could be for anything. At the coffeehouse, a young woman asked for an autograph, telling him how much she loved "How I Met Your Mother." But it could be for "Freaks and Geeks," the beloved 1999 teen comedy that launched a host of careers, or "The Muppets" or one of several comedies he made with filmmaker Judd Apatow.
"He could run for mayor of South Pasadena," I tell Segel's friend and collaborator, James Ponsoldt, who directed him in "The End of the Tour" and several episodes of "Shrinking," the 2023 Apple TV+ series that Segel co-created.
"When we were shooting 'The End of the Tour,' I felt he could be the mayor of Grand Rapids, Michigan," Ponsoldt answers, laughing. "I've worked with other actors who are pretty famous, and Jason is singular. People feel like they know him. He feels like your little brother or your friend from college. And it's not an accidental, effortless thing. He's one of the most studied actors I know. People relate to him, which makes audiences let their guard down so he can take them into some dark territory."
Segel does precisely that in "Shrinking," playing a therapist grieving the loss of his wife. The first episode finds Jimmy, a year into his mourning, hitting rock bottom, numbing himself with booze and drugs and a late-night pool party with call girls. The series spends the remainder of its first season on a journey with Jimmy as he exits grief and (sort of) gets his act together, strengthening bonds with his colleagues and friends (Harrison Ford and Jessica Williams, both terrific) and his teenage daughter (Lukita Maxwell).
Segel developed "Shrinking" with Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein, two of the creators of "Ted Lasso," and the two series share an optimistic view of humanity, as well as the approach of blending high and low comedy with weighty themes and melancholic moments.
"I like that it begins with Jimmy at rock bottom," Segel says. "To me, that's a hopeful start, because it's not going to get any worse. If I'm watching a movie and it begins with someone's wedding or promotion, I get real scared. Like, 'This is not going to go so well.'"
Segel goes on, telling me he knows what it's like to pull yourself out of rock bottom and that it's "actually quite funny and sloppy and confusing and you're laughing a lot and you're crying a lot and you're making mistakes and you're getting it right." Earlier, we had been talking about the years he spent living in a house directly behind the Chateau Marmont, the Sunset Boulevard hotel that has long been a symbol of Hollywood glamour and excess. The Chateau offered 24-hour room service delivery to Segel and residents living on Monteel Road to stave off complaints should any of the hotel's guests party into the wee, small hours of the morning.
"I slowly found out, though, that you never use 24-hour room service for a 3 p.m. green salad," Segel says, laughing. "That's a 2 a.m. spaghetti and meatballs kind of thing."
Which Segel gave up — along with other vices — when he got sober around a decade ago. He talks openly about this and the "existential crisis" he went through at the age of 33. I tell him I don't recall reading many headlines about this low moment in his life.
"That stuff's so internal," Segel answers. "On a closed-circuit television, rock bottom can look like sitting on a couch."
"At 33, I was being told that I was winning life," he continues. "I had a big, successful TV show and a bunch of hit movies, some of which I had written. The song from 'The Muppets' movie won the Oscar. You're supposed to feel great. And I was really unhappy. That's a very scary place to be when everyone's telling you that this is as good as it gets."
So Segel sold the home behind the Chateau, said goodbye to "How I Met Your Mother," signed onto the David Foster Wallace movie, moved to Ojai and gradually began to "moderate the throttle" and redefine his criteria for success.
What does that look like for him today?
"It's not moment-to-moment, unbridled joy," he says, "but it's like feeling good and satisfied and enough. That's a big one. 'It's enough.'"
"Shrinking," he says, is enough, because it answers the doubts he had a decade ago about whether he was capable of pulling off the kind of acting he loved to watch on-screen and create the kind of material that resonated with him as a middle-aged man.
"I'm making something at 43 that feels like it has the weight of someone who's 43 years old," Segel says. He smiles. "I mean, you can't do stuff about being afraid of girls your whole life."
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