In Season 2, Shrinking has established itself as one of AppleTV+’s big winners. A considerable part of what has helped it connect with viewers is the ensemble cast, including Jason Segal as series’ lead, the grieving therapist Jimmy, Harrison Ford as his mentor and boss Paul, Jessica Williams as his best friend and colleague Gaby, and many others.

Transitioning from a feature supporting role to the main cast is actor Ted McGinley who plays Derek. Derek is one half of the married couple that lives next door to Jimmy and shouldered much of the load of raising Jimmy’s daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell) when Jimmy lost himself to substances and grief after the death of his wife. From the beginning, McGinley imbued Jimmy with an offbeat, seemingly unsinkable positivity. In season 2, McGinley deepened and broadened his portrayal of Derek. He kindly sat down with Tim Stevens to discuss how co-star Christa Miller helped him find Derek, the character’s evolution, and what makes the Shrinking set such an unusual place to work.

THE SPOOL: You’ve been acting for some time now, dating back to Happy Days. Looking through your roles, I noticed there isn’t really just one “McGinley” type, roles where you are just sort of playing the hits. You’re always finding a way to do something a little different. With that in mind, what was the essence to Derek? Was there a moment in Season 1 where you felt like you found him?

TED MCGINLEY: Thinking back on [Season 1], the first two episodes, I was trying to figure him out for sure. I think, really, I found him through Christa [Miller, who plays Liz, Derek’s wife]. In their relationship, how they reacted to each other, I began to find where I thought Derek lived. I had to use her to find me, for sure, because there wasn’t any backstory at the start. But I think around 3 or 4, I started to feel like, “Okay, I’ve got this guy. Now I feel like I’m wearing his pants.” And I could see by how we were playing off each other. This is where we live, and this is how we live. And then it kept working. I said, “Okay, I got it.”

The note that I got from Bill Lawrence early on was, “[Derek] ’s gonna say things that may not seem that nice, but everything he says is nice.” So, I realized that Derek’s role in this piece is to be the light. There’s so much darkness surrounding… Everyone’s got these brutal things they’re dealing with in life. Derek is going to represent warmth and a safe place to land who people want to talk to. And, what a great thing to get to play.

TS: Coming in as a full cast member in Season 2, there’s some stickier stuff that comes up, plotlines you’re given to deal with. How do you negotiate those more complicate situations while still occupying that place of being, as you called it, the light in the show?

TM: I think you deal with it because you see how people feel…how we all deal with things differently. So you see how Derek goes through difficult, rough patches. You also see how honest he really is. You can see how adult and loving [Liz and Derek] were able to work and are able to work through difficulties. And you see that they have this fun-loving family [with their sons] that we haven’t really discovered up to this point, right?

I thought it was really beautiful for the adult nature and the acceptance of failure and weakness—how we all are that person at different times. When you can trust someone enough, you can spot all of that in them.

TS: Speaking of that kind of trust, what is it like working with the whole team, from the creators through to the crew?

TM: For me, on a set, I’m a bit of a nervous guy. I have so much angst before work. I always want to get right into something and let it come out. With [Shrinking], it starts with Jason Segal and Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein, it is a safe place to go and take chances. Sometimes you fail and nobody’s going to fire you for that. You just get up and they say, “That was alright. Let’s try something else.” That just never happens usually because we don’t have that much time in this business. Everything is time. “Let’s go. We’ve go to keep moving. That’s good enough.”

We don’t have that on Shrinking. We don’t move on until we get it. You’re allowed to take chances and it not work. For me having that safe place is everything and I think it shows in my work. I do so much better in a place like that and with people like that.

So the crew, the cast, the writers, they’re just so generous and so open to anything. Even Harrison [Ford]. He loves it. “Oh, you came up with an idea? Let’s try it.” It’s that way all the way down the line. You’re allowed to change a line or a word here or there, and nobody’s angry. If it works better for the show, great. It’s just an unusual environment and space.

TS: You mentioned earlier how acting against Christa helped you find Derek. In addition to her, I’m curious how playing against the ensemble, this really great cast where everyone has their own kind of energy, how do you experience being a part of that? How does it influence and inform your acting? Especially now that you get to interact with more members than last year and new people to the cast like Damon Wayans Jr. Does that lead you discovering new shades to Derek that you otherwise might not?

TM: Yes, and it’s going to be that way going forward. There are no work relationships for Derek, right? Well, Damon as the “other” Derrick, that was he work relationship but now that’s his buddy. They just hit it off. He loves Derrick. And he loves Gaby (Jessica Williams) so much. He trusts her so much, and she’s become so important in his life. So he would never connect her with Derrick, never introduce them, if he didn’t like Derrick just as much. And that’s great.

And that’s the thing with the rest of the cast, he comes into it with a completely different mindset because he’s not part of the office. So it shades everything different as it goes. It lets us go to this full circle of humanity that I respect so much.

Shrinking is available on AppleTV+ now. The Season 2 finale comes to the service beginning December 25.