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And now, Harrison Ford’s comedy stylings…

Vaseline October 14, 2024

Harrison Ford thinks you’ve taken him way too seriously over the years. Somehow he’s developed this reputation for serious intensity, but he’s not sure how or why that happened. “As far as I’m concerned, all I’ve ever done is comedy,” he says Vanity fair.

Maybe he pointed the finger one too many times, or maybe his extremely deadpan delivery over the years was just too convincing. Consider the inherent absurdity of his most memorable roles: an archaeologist who conducts most of his scientific research with a bullwhip? A boastful starship captain whose copilot is a giant space monkey? A cop who goes undercover to protect an Amish woman and her young son after the son witnesses a murder? Okay, maybe that last one is the exception that proves the rule.

But Ford even maintains that Witness has a sense of humor. “In a way, yes, because the jokes are really the surprise in everything, in a serious film or in a streaming comedy,” he says. “Finding the humor in the moment usually makes us survive. I like to invest characters I play in their own personal sense of humor. I think everyone has one, even if they aren’t funny.

That required the comedy series Apple TV+ Shrink, in which Ford plays a gruff senior therapist at a clinic across the street Jason Segel And Jessica Williams to emphasize that the actor everyone considered the thinking man’s action hero was actually a comedian. “I’m a stupid person,” Ford says – as seriously as possible. (Maybe he was pointing his finger too. We were on the phone.)

Shrink returns for season two on October 16, so Ford fans will soon see him poking even more holes in his staid appearance with that pointing finger of his. “It’s always so interesting how the story is shaped, right? Because you have no control over it. And the story of this show was, ‘Who would have thought Harrison Ford could do a comedy?’” says Shrink co-creator Bill Lawrence whose other credits include Ted Lasso And Scrubs. “It’s crazy. He is a comedic actor.”

Laurens emphasizes that Naturally he and colleague Shrink makers Segel and Brett Goldstein knew that the now 82-year-old actor had the necessary absurdity in him. “When we wrote the script, we wrote a ‘Harrison Ford’ type thing because I’ve been around long enough to have seen him in the movie. Working girl. If Indiana Jones had no comedic self-awareness, the film wouldn’t have worked. If Star Wars “If that character in such a serious film didn’t have the inherent comedic cockiness, it wouldn’t have worked,” says Lawrence. “So I knew Harrison Ford was funny, man. I’ve seen him funny countless times.”

What they didn’t realize was how far Ford would go. Lawrence and his fellow creators assumed that “it will be funny that Harrison is gruff and grumpy, and that will be his comedic wheelhouse.” But when he got there, we thought, oh shit, he’s got a lot more tools than that. Dr. Not only is Ford’s Paul Rhoades a truth-telling father figure for Segel’s widowed therapist Jimmy Laird, but his toughness is shown to mask a vulnerability within himself that is both comic and emotional. Ford is willing to sing a pop song at the top of his lungs to shut up a younger colleague, performing a one-man Cheech & Chong-esque routine after Dr. Paul has consumed too many weed gummies, and shamelessly mocks his own self-serious reputation in less than dignified situations.