Jason Segel worked with Cobie Smulders for nine years on How I Met Your Mother. Now, the pair star together in season 3 of the Apple TV comedy Shrinking. Smulders made her season 3 debut in Wednesday’s episode, where her character, Sofi, shared flirtatious banter with Segel’s Jimmy.
Segel spoke to ABC Audio about how working with Smulders on Shrinking is both the same and different to working with her on How I Met Your Mother, where they played friends Marshall and Robin.
“The way it is the same is that Cobie Smulders is like the nicest human being on Earth. And not just cause she’s Canadian. She is just like to the core, a wonderful human being,” Segel said. “We didn’t have much overlap on How I Met Your Mother despite working together for almost a decade because our storylines were always — Marshall was usually paired with Lily.”
Segel said that what’s special about doing Shrinking with Smulders now is that they have shared history.
“We’ve known each other for 20 years, 25 years, maybe something like that. Both been through a bunch of life stuff and the twisty-turny road that being in this business is about … and we’ve stayed in touch that whole time,” Segel said.
This, Segel said, helps the audience feel that Jimmy and Sofi have a real connection.
“I think when these two characters look at each other, it seems like they’ve known each other forever. Even though story-wise, they’ve only known each for a little bit,” Segel said. “It reads like soulmate because of that. That’s sort of like what a soulmate is supposed to feel like. Like, you’ve only just met, but you’ve known other forever. So I think that that was the magic trick of the casting.”
New episodes of Shrinking release every Wednesday on Apple TV.
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