Interview: Zach Braff on Directing ‘Shrinking’ and His Approach to TV and Film

The Apple TV+ series Shrinking is the latest brainchild of co-creator Bill Lawrence (interviewed here by our editor Joey), who reunites with his Ted Lasso star Brett Goldstein as well as Jason Segel (also interviewed here by Joey), the star of this show, behind the scenes. Episode eight of season one, “Boop,” also offered an opportunity for Lawrence to work with another longtime collaborator: Scrubs star Zach Braff, who previously directed the second installment of Ted Lasso (which Joey spoke to him about here).

Awards Radar had the chance to speak once again with Braff, who recently released his latest film, A Good Person (go figure, he talked about it with Joey here), about coming on board to shoot an episode late in the season without having seen much of the rest of the show:

“I’ve never done this before. When I directed Ted Lasso, it was episode two, so it was quite early on and it was a bit of a different vibe. They were shooting the pilot while I was there prepping. That was a different experience. This was the first time I had come on to a show that had already shot seven episodes and I had actually dropped in to their world. The crazy thing is I had only seen the pilot. I had read all the other scripts but the pilot was the only one that was cut, so it’s a bizarre assignment. You watch the pilot and then you read the other scripts, but they haven’t been materialized or aren’t available to be seen yet, and you’ve got to dive in and stay within the lexicon of the pilot but then find a way to make it your own and do something unique with the script that you’ve been given.”

On working with Lawrence for the past two decades:

“I just know his sensibility, partly because I grew up learning. Scrubs was some grad school for me, not just from Bill but from all the wonderful directors who directed Scrubs. I went to film school at Northwestern, but I feel like doing nine years of Scrubs was nine years of grad school working with the best comedy directors in television who taught me so much. So, through them, and Bill, I really feel like I have a good sense of what his instinct is going to be.”

Watch the full conversation below.

Season one of Shrinking is streaming on Apple TV+.