Jessica Williams is ready for the unexpected, even on the 405 Freeway

By Yvonne VillarrealSenior Television Writer

Oct. 16, 2024 2:12 PM PT

Is this what it’s like, experiencing road rage with Jessica Williams?

“You’re f— kidding me, right?” she mutters repeatedly to herself as she steers her milky blue Jeep down the 405 Freeway, darting her eyes between the highway ahead and the black car in the lane next to her that is inching too close for comfort. It’s unclear what prompted this. Poor lane changing? Speed of travel? This is L.A. — anything is possible. As Williams rams her finger against a console button to lower her window, any fear that her disoriented passengers are experiencing as the incident seemingly escalates quickly gives way to dumbfounded laughter.

Turns out, her “Shrinking” co-star Jason Segel is in the other vehicle.

You’re probably wondering how we ended up in this situation, experiencing this type of kismet and a perfectly scripted only-in-L.A. moment. This, kids, is the story of how we met Segel on the freeway.

It’s an oven-like September morning in Eagle Rock when my day with Williams begins at Not Another Pottery Studio. As a backdrop for discussing the themes of “Shrinking,” in which the 35-year-old actor stars opposite Segel and Harrison Ford — the voice of reason and beating heart of the Apple TV+ comedy, now starting its second season — Williams opted to introduce me to the therapeutic activity that’s been vital to her mental wellness.

“I like to make things that are colorful; I like to make things you want to grab, that have that sense of play,” she says, laying out an assortment of her creations that she lugged over from her designated shelf in the back.

She recently did a course on the nerikomi method, a technique from Japan that involves stacking and cutting colored pieces of clay to form different patterns, and proudly shows a bowl she’s crafted in that style when she stops to admire my T-shirt, featuring a young Paul McCartney strumming a guitar, that peeks out from my apron. It prompts her to share how she recently met music producer T Bone Burnett and his wife, screenwriter and director Callie Khouri — both are fans of “Shrinking,” she says — and was invited to a listening party for Ringo Starr’s country album, which Burnett helped produce, that was happening across town in a couple of hours.

“I obviously can’t go because of our interview. Unless ... “ she considers for a moment. “S—, should we go?”

Uh, yeah.

“If you guys double, triple dog dare me, we can do this for an hour and then we just get in my Jeep and go,” she declares. It’s settled. And, so, Lauren Allison, the owner of the studio, launches into the first steps of how to make incense holders.

Williams, who lives nearby, is one of the founding members of the studio, which opened over the summer. She had just wrapped filming on the second season of “Shrinking” and wanted to reacquaint herself with the craft that’s become her calming hobby. She first dabbled with pottery and ceramics years ago while she was living in Brooklyn and going through a difficult breakup. She needed a diversion. And community.

Clad in baggy overalls, a white-and-black checkered cardigan and floral-printed Crocs, Williams hangs on that last thought for a moment. She is not looking to change her life more than is necessary. She’s originally from L.A.’s South Bay, and the nomad lifestyle that’s a feature of her profession as an actor often leaves her feeling like she’s stranded on an island. Homesickness runs deep — like when she left home for New York at 22 to work on “The Daily Show,” her first major gig, or in her 30s when she left for the Dominican Republic to shoot this year’s remake of “Road House.”

It’s why being cast on “Shrinking,” which shoots in Los Angeles, felt like a gift, she says.

“Acting can be very lonely,” she says. “You get on these different jobs and we have to pick up and go. I grew up here and the tension for me has always been, ‘I’m going to miss my friends and my family.’”

Williams is intentional about the projects she chooses as a result, and she strives to have a life outside of acting.

“A big value of mine is a sense of home and a sense of place and a sense of connection with what fulfills me,” she says. “It sounds stupid, but laughing with my friends is all I want, forever.”

A woman, wearing a a strapless dress, sits on a patio chair looking up at the camera

In “Shrinking,” Williams plays Gaby, a therapist at a Southern California practice who works alongside colleagues Jimmy (Segel) and Paul (Ford). Co-created by Bill Lawrence, Brett Goldstein and Segel, the series delves into the lives of the trio and their patients. Grief and the ways it presents itself in the characters’ lives is a throughline in the series.

The first season introduced viewers to Jimmy, a grieving widower who begins to take an unconventional approach with his clients. Gaby, a recent divorcee whose ex struggles with addiction, was best friends with Jimmy’s late wife. Jimmy and Gaby find comfort in each other and eventually develop a casual sexual relationship. The second season finds Gaby reconsidering their dynamic and grappling with the needs of her aging and ailing mother — all while juggling her job and teaching too.

Williams had met with Lawrence and Segel once over Zoom to talk about playing the plucky therapist. The offer for the role came quickly.

“I don’t want to go over the top because the writers are great and it’s a collaborative thing here, but, man, Jessica really helped shape that character herself,” Lawrence says. “I found that the most successful characters, at least in my [shows], the ownership shifts to the performer very quickly. One of the reasons her character really popped for people is her ownership of it not only extends to how she speaks and what she cares about and the stories we tell, but it’s even the minutiae of what she wears [and] how her house looks.”

In this season, Lawrence says they are starting to dissect what makes someone want to become a therapist.

“One of the things that we established for Gaby, and what really plays itself to a head this year, is the very thing that put her in this world and makes her so skilled at [being a therapist] is also kind of a fatal flaw, which is she’s a caretaker by nature, even at the expense of her own mental health,” he says.

The emotions and themes the series tackles felt somewhat aligned with Williams’ life. After finding momentum in her career — thanks to a multiyear run on “The Daily Show” and the success of her podcast “2 Dope Queens,” which she co-hosted with Phoebe Robinson — she took a step back from performing in 2019 after her longtime boyfriend, Blaine Spesak, died. New York, where she lived, began to feel emotionally suffocating, so she moved back to L.A. (She eventually returned to acting with roles in “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” and the second season of Max’s now-defunct “Love Life.”)

“When he died, I had the rug pulled out from under me,” she says in a soft-spoken tone as she gently molds a ball holder for an incense stick. “I felt like nothing was safe. I felt like life was so fragile and my identity was so tied to him being alive that I didn’t feel safe. And so I wanted to be home.”

Three men and a woman stand on the set of "The Daily Show"

The discussion gets Williams talking about her own journey with therapy, which she began while a student at Cal State Long Beach. “If you’re in college, mental health services are free, and you should absolutely take advantage of them,” she says.

But it became essential, she says, after she gained exposure on “The Daily Show” and was subsequently trolled on the internet. She’s been doing therapy pretty consistently for about 15 years now.

“It’s so critical for me, and it fluctuates,” she says. “I’ll do it once a week, sometimes I’ll fall off and not do it for a couple of months. But it’s like exercise, which I don’t love doing until I’m doing it.”

She adds that one of her favorite things is getting secondhand therapy from other people. “I love when someone is like, ‘My therapist just said the most interesting thing last week ...’ I’m like, ‘Tell me! Let’s be enlightened together,‘” she says.

The finishing touches are delicately made on our pieces as time winds down on our designated hour. It’s Ringo time.

Allison and I climb into Williams’ Jeep and embark on a 45-minute drive to the Westside. Williams is puckish and earnest in conversation — she’s the kind of car companion you’d want for a long road trip, if you’re OK with her aversion to air conditioning. She wastes little time soundtracking the drive with her go-to curated Spotify playlist — a mix of ’90s and 2000s nostalgia hits that includes Christina Aguilera, Spice Girls and Avril Lavigne.

“This kind of music gets me out of my head,” she says. “It reminds me that life does not always have to be that serious. Sometimes you just need a silly, perfect song.”

Asking what she was like when she was younger elicits a tender affirmation from Williams to her childhood self. “Oh my gosh, that sweet girl,” she says. “I was very gentle.” She describes herself as “really sensitive, really quiet and not popular.” Her biggest wish was to be liked by girls. “I wanted to have friends really badly. That was my main thing,” she says.

She was a big reader, often consuming two books a week. Part of her contemplative nature, she says, stems from her mother speaking to her like an adult from an early age.

“She was a single mom, so she would go to college and go to class and she would talk to me all the time — never like a baby or a kid — and I would just take it in and listen,” Williams says. “She was a really playful mom too. She’s my buddy.”

A woman wearing a strapless dress poses outside

While taking college courses, her mother worked for the California Department of Transportation. From an early age, Williams wanted to aim for that same sense of security in a job but as a performer — as naive as that may sound. There was a brief time where she wanted to be a pop star, but watching “Saturday Night Live” with her grandmother, she thought, “I want to do that.” She went to a performing arts high school and was part of the improv team.

“I thinking acting is just about empathy and about working out your inner issues and inner emotions on camera,” she says. “I just like feeling present. Performing makes me feel alive.”

Traveling northbound on the 101 freeway, along a stretch near Sherman Oaks, sparks a memory from Williams about the drives she used to make to visit her aunt and grandma, who lived in Winnetka. Lost in the memory, she nearly misses the prompt from her GPS to merge onto the 405 freeway. From the far left lane, she makes several quick lane changes and halts in the connector divider as drivers motor along at a slow pace, waiting and hoping for a courteous driver to allow her to merge. “I love the thrill of this,” she says. After several cars pass, one allows her in.

“Thank you,” she says aloud.

Two minutes after easing onto the 405, the freak-out that began this story and revealed that Segel is driving alongside us commences. After a brief exchange of “oh my Gods” through rolled-down windows, Segel pushes ahead of us. And Williams reaches for her phone to call him.

“Hello, my darling,” Segel says, his voice coming through the car’s media system.

After telling him about the unexpected turn our interview has taken, she has a lightbulb moment: “Were you the person who let me over?”

“Yes,” he says with a laugh. “I didn’t know it was you. But glad the L.A. Times caught my random act of kindness,” he says.

After some more pleasantries, Segel ends the call: “Talk to you later ... and Jessica’s the best!”

Even as Williams tries to continue with the drive and our interview, her befuddlement over what just transpired returns — she’s as struck by how the event speaks to Segel’s character as she is by the coincidence of it all.

“I can’t believe the person who let me over was Jason,” she says. “Of course it was him being like, ‘You want to do this insane five-lane change and cut in front of people? Yes, Jessica, I will allow you to do that.’ That’s how he is as a scene partner — just lets you go for it. That’s my favorite person to work with on Earth.”

A woman holds a gigantic teal water bottle while her hands are pressed against her cheeks

A few days later, when reached by phone, Segel’s fascination with the encounter — “That blew my mind. That was a really, really big coincidence. It’s proof of the simulation!” — gives way to his fondness for sharing scenes with Williams.

“The closest experience I’ve had to working with Jessica is the movies that I made with Paul Rudd,” he says. “Sometimes somebody comes in with a plan, and no matter what you do, they are not deviating from what they practiced in the mirror. Trying s— can be embarrassing because sometimes you’re wrong, but you don’t know until you try. And one thing I do believe that Jessica and I have is neither of us is going to allow the other person to look dumb without going down. We will ride the sinking ship together because we respect that someone is trying.”

Ford is similarly effusive about his co-star and the playfulness Williams provokes in him and his character. The Paul-and-Gaby dynamic has been an unlikely bright spot in the series. Because of Gaby’s influence, the elder character has been persuaded to haul a ginormous water bottle to ensure he hydrates and even partakes in some carpool karaoke to Sugar Ray’s “Every Morning” with her.

“She’s completely unrestrained in her imagination and her capacity to improvise,” he says by phone. “She gets where the jokes are and she doesn’t require a lot of talk about it. With her, I think of Yoda: There is no talk, only do. She’s stretched my imagination.”

The unexpected change of setting for this interview is further proof of that. “This is how I roll,” Williams says. “Sometimes you just have to say yes to your impulses.”

So, here we are, pulling up to a recording studio, about to listen to Ringo Starr’s country album.

How’s that for improv?