Many people remember Harrison Ford’s role as Paul Rhoades in the Emmy-nominated Apple TV+ series, Shrinkcreated by Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel and Brett Goldstein, depicting the realities of living with Parkinson’s disease.
Ford’s co-star Ted McGinley recently revealed that one of the series’ most pivotal and moving scenes from Season 2, in which Rhoades is completely transparent with his friends and colleagues about the disease’s toll, was inspired by a real conversation Michael J. Fox had with his colleagues. Spider city castmates about his medication management.
“He had to keep it. He couldn’t use it for rehearsals…” McGinley told Rich Eisen in February. “He had to save it for his life, for his family, and that was kind of a speech from Harrison.”
“[Fox] said… ‘I feel myself withering away. I’m safe here, so I’m not going to take this medicine. “I can only handle so much because it’s the law of diminishing returns,” he added.
Over the years, Fox and his Spider city co-stars discussed how the actor would carefully time his medication to manage symptoms during the live taping.
Fox left the show in 2000, just over a year after making his Parkinson’s diagnosis public, to focus his energies on his family and working on a cure.
Although there are effective treatments for the symptoms of Parkinson’s, certain medications may become less effective over time due to the progression of the disease.
McGinley said Lawrence, who also created Spider citydrew inspiration from that conversation when writing Rhoades’ monologue from the season 2 finale.
“I haven’t taken my pills because I want to save them for when I really need them, not to hide from you,” Rhoades tells a room of his friends and colleagues.
Fox, who returned to acting this year with guest appearances in the series’ third season, said he was “brought to tears” by Ford’s portrayal.
“That’s something that’s great about Harrison. He doesn’t have Parkinson’s, but he’s a brilliant actor,” Michael J. Fox said. Vanity fair. “I didn’t have to convince him that I had Parkinson’s, but he had to convince me that he had Parkinson’s. What I wasn’t prepared for was how much of his own understanding of the disease he brought to it. I mean, I recognized Parkinson’s in his eyes. The things I felt, I recognized in the way he expressed himself…”
