Interview: Michael Showalter on ‘The Shrink Next Door,’ ‘The Dropout,’ and ‘I Love That For You’

Michael Showalter has had a busy year. He saw Jessica Chastain win an Oscar for a film he directed, The Eyes of Tammy Faye (which he spoke to Joey about here). He directed and produced The Shrink Next Door, a haunting look at the destructive relationship between Marty Markowitz (Will Ferrell) and his psychiatrist, Dr. Ike Herschkopf (Paul Rudd), for Apple TV+. Next up was The Dropout for Hulu, a look at the collapse of Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes (Amanda Seyfried). And now he’s executive-producing I Love That For You for Showtime, starring Vanessa Bayer as a shopping channel host pretending that her cancer has returned.

Fourteen minutes wasn’t nearly enough time to cover everything that Showalter has done recently and what’s coming up next for him, but we did our best. On what drew him to these people who lie, he shared:

“I think I’m drawn, in a sort of can’t-look-away thing, to people who have the gall to lie. Half of you wishes that I could be that cavalier, because then maybe I could have a nine-billion-dollar company or whatever, but then there’s another part of you that feels like I want there to be some kind of karmic justice for people who lie to get what they want and that people actually telling the truth has value still. That there’s some small reward for that.”

Watch the full conversation below: