This story was featured in The Must Read, a newsletter in which our editors recommend one can’t-miss story every weekday. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
Harrison Ford, legendary actor and sufferer of zero fools, star of Indiana Jones and Star Wars and a million glorious ’90s conspiracy thrillers, is now improbably starring in a TV comedy.
On the Apple TV+ series Shrinking, opposite Jason Segel and Jessica Williams, the 82-year-old plays Paul, the owner of a therapy practice. Paul’s gruffness and no-nonsense style feels not so far away from Ford, or, at least, from his public persona—droll one-liners included.
Ahead of Shrinking season two, which debuts on October 16, Ford spoke to GQ about how close he feels to Paul, whether he misses those thrillers, and that one fit pic you have saved to your phone. (You know the one.)
Harrison Ford: It’s not my first comedy. I mean, I’ve done a lot of comedies in film. It’s my first television thing, maybe, but I have done a lot of things that were branded comedies.
Well, and that’s not true either.
Yeah, so let’s see what else we can debunk while we’re at it. Yeah, no—the show is in fact a blend of comedy and drama that’s quite unusual and striking for its bravery.
The success of the writing. It seems a difficult thing to do, but it was done with grace and charm, and I thought it was successful when I read the script that was given to me by Brett Goldstein. And it was something that I immediately was attracted to because of its success in both the areas of drama and comedy. It was an unusual character for me to play, I thought.
Well, as an actor, you really have only your own experience, your own capacity to understand, and you’re stuck with yourself. It’s the chemistry you came with.
I don’t have Parkinson’s disease. There are a lot of elements and details of Paul’s life that are different to mine, but I think he’s a comic character. The humor is written for me—I certainly don’t make this shit up. But I lent my face and my head, so if it looks like me, I guess it must be me.
What they have to say is really unusual in my experience. What they have to say is thank you. They say, “Thank you. We love this show.”
They don’t want anything. They don’t want an autograph, they don’t want a picture. They just want to share their pleasure in the experience. That’s something different to what the usual exchange is with a stranger.
He’s coming closer to the pressures that are part of the progress of his disease. I think he’s beginning to see that he’s going to have to make changes in his life and accept the reality of his situation. How that plays out is part of the story of the season.
No, no. They’re very different versions, I have to assume, from what I’ve heard. No. I take no offense!
It was a very different period in our culture. It was a very different period in the movie business. There was a discernible zeitgeist, and the movies seemed to capture that.
It was a street that ran both ways—there was a very close connection between movies and the culture. It was a time when many of our extraordinary filmmakers were still working, the Pollacks and Pakulas and even some guys whose names didn’t start with a P. I was lucky enough to have come up in that period of time, and so I got the chance to work with those guys. To me, that was the extraordinary thing about that time—that I had these incredible guys to work with. It was a great period of my life and I’m really grateful for it.
Actually I feel bad for us. I feel bad that we don’t have these stories around us in the world.
I mean, it seems this is a particularly bizarre period of human history, I believe. I certainly hope. I hope that we’ll get through it and begin talking to each other instead of at each other. We will begin to work our way through the international issues and the political issues and all this shit soup we’re living in.
You can’t sit around talking about how great it was in the past. You’ve just got to make something better in the present. That’s all. I’m not that guy.
Well, did I do something? What did I say?
I mean, I don’t know.
I mean, this is the Marvel universe and I’m just there on a weekend pass. I’m a sailor new to this town. Show me the way to go home.
I understand the appeal of other kinds of films besides the kind we made in the ’80s and ’90s. I don’t have anything general to say about it. It’s the condition our condition is in, and things change and morph and go on. We’re silly if we sit around regretting the change and don’t participate. I’m participating in a new part of the business that, for me at least, I think is really producing some good experiences for an audience. I enjoy that.
It’s the quality of writing. It doesn’t matter what the genre is. It doesn’t matter whether it’s on television or in movies. It’s the writing, it’s the story, it’s the character, it’s the emotional experience for an audience or for myself. It’s people that I have some feeling that I want to work with, or it’s a quality opportunity.
I suppose I should be sitting on my ass, but I actually love working.
Oh, all of them.
No, I mean, your experience is so different to the total sum of cultural history of a movie or a project that you do. You have a personal experience with it and then there’s whatever happens in the business world of it. They don’t always coincide and you don’t always try to make them coincide or to rationalize the experience. There have been films that I’m surprised did not do better than they did. But it is such an unpredictable world that a film comes out into, and reasons for a film’s lack of success may have very little to do with the film itself and it’s just the circumstances under which it was released.
You certainly have to be aware of your business profile, but I always thought when I was working more, and the business was sort of supporting working more, I would do one for them and one for me. That is, I’d do something that I just really wanted to do because of the people involved or the subject matter or the character, and then I’d do one that I think would be a popular success because I think that’s important also.
When times are good and you have those opportunities to choose, you generally choose to do both things.
No, I haven’t. I’m curious, but I have not seen it yet.
Oh, anyone can. We could teach monkeys to fly airplanes, and have.
I think yes, anyone can fly a modern airplane. Yes. But why? The question is not if someone could fly, the question is why do they want to fly?
It’s a great job and it’s become a field where there’s a great demand for pilots. We’ve been talking about the failure to train American pilots. America trains more foreign pilots than they do American pilots. I’m not being xenophobic here. It’s not about having to fly with American pilots. It’s just that we’ve known for a long time that we needed to train more pilots, and we have done that successfully now. Pilots are making a wonderful living when, 15 years ago, they weren’t doing so well at the beginning of their careers.
But it’s a great career, and I just encourage people that are interested in it to give it a go.
I think I’m going to be ill.
I’ve seen this picture.
I’ve grown out of it.
You know the story. I’d just had lunch with Jimmy Buffett and Ed Bradley. That’ll do it to you every time.
Oh, I think it’s rubbish.
I don’t think the question is whether or not there are any movie stars. There’s wonderful actors coming up every day. Whether or not they become movie stars is really not the point. If movies need stars, they will find them. I’ve never fucking understood being a movie star. I’m an actor. I tell stories. I’m part of a group of people who work together, collaborate on telling stories. I’m an assistant storyteller. That’s what I am.