Many people remember Harrison Ford’s role as Paul Rhoades in the Emmy-nominated Apple TV+ series, Shrinking, created by Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel and Brett Goldstein, portraying the realities of living with Parkinson’s disease.
Ford’s co-star Ted McGinley recently revealed that one of the show’s most pivotal and moving scenes from Season 2, in which Rhoades is fully transparent with his friends and colleagues about the toll of the disease, was inspired by a real conversation Michael J. Fox had with his Spin City castmates about his medication management.
“He had to save it. He couldn’t use it for rehearsals …” McGinley told Rich Eisen in February. “He had to save it for his life, for his family, and that was sort of Harrison’s speech.”
“[Fox] was saying … ‘I can feel myself atrophying. I’m safe here, so I’m not going to take this medication. I can only take so much because it’s the law of diminishing returns,'” he added.
Over the years, Fox and his Spin City co-stars have discussed how the actor would carefully time his medication to control symptoms during the live tapings.
Fox left the show in 2000, a little more than a year after going public with his Parkinson’s diagnosis, to focus his energy on his family and working toward a cure.
Though there are effective treatments for Parkinson’s symptoms, certain medications can become less effective over time due to the progression of the disease.
McGinley said Lawrence, who also created Spin City, pulled inspiration from that conversation in writing Rhoades’ monologue from the season 2 finale.
“I didn’t take my pills because I want to save them for when I really need them, not to hide from you,” Rhoades tells a room of his friends and colleagues.
Fox, who made a return to acting this year with guest appearances in the series’ third season, said he was “brought to tears” by Ford’s portrayal.
“That’s one thing that’s amazing about Harrison. He doesn’t have Parkinson’s, but he’s a brilliant actor,” Michael J. Fox told Vanity Fair. “I don’t have to convince him I have Parkinson’s, but he had to convince me he had Parkinson’s. What I wasn’t prepared for was how much of his own understanding of the disease he brought to it. I mean, I recognized Parkinson’s in his eyes. The things I was feeling, I recognized in the way he was expressing himself…”
