J
essica Williams knows when to ask for help. It’s an early November day in Glendale, California, but no sunlight is reaching the indoor basketball court where I’ve just lodged our only ball firmly between the hoop and backboard. “Oh, cool, dude,” Williams says with a cackle as we stare at the predicament. “That’s awesome.” Before I can pretend to think of a solution, she’s running over to a pair of teenage girls sitting crisscross applesauce over their phones nearby. “Can I use your basketball just to knock out this ball that’s stuck?” Williams asks. “Thank you!” she sings over her shoulder, skipping back toward the scene of our crime. “Be right baaaackkkkkk!”
This is a taste of the delightful energy that has made the former Daily Show correspondent, 36, a breakout star of the Apple TV series Shrinking, which returns for a third season on Jan. 28. A breezy comedy with moments of tender drama, the show follows Jason Segel’s Jimmy, a father and therapist mourning the death of his wife, which has sent his life into a tailspin. Williams plays his colleague Gaby, best friend to his dead wife and a ball of passion and dirty jokes. Harrison Ford is Paul, the elder statesman of their therapy practice, who has recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
Though Williams’ comedic instincts have shone through in projects from Booksmart to the Fantastic Beasts franchise, she’s spent the better part of her career pushing to showcase more serious acting chops. With the goofy, sex-positive Gaby, she’s effortlessly charming as usual, but the character is also built from Williams’ real-life experience with loss — and a newfound desire to celebrate life’s warmer moments.
“The draw [of Shrinking] is that these are people you want to hang out with,” says Williams, her six-foot frame draped in a worn WWE Raw “Stone Cold” Steve Austin shirt and New York Liberty basketball shorts. “It’s not a cool show, quote, unquote. It’s a sweet show. And there’s something about, especially as I get older, being cool that I actually don’t like. Grief has affected me that way, where life is short. I’m just gonna tell you what keeps me up at night. And it’s nice to be in that space on TV. It gives me freedom to be myself. I can’t stand serious people that aren’t fun. It’s like, just be funnn. Just watch The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.”
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There are a lot of similarities between Williams and Gaby. They’re both brash, often unserious, and decidedly nerdy. (Williams likes to imagine a scenario where she explains to Gaby that she lives in an alternate reality where her mentor Paul played Han Solo in Star Wars.) Even as Williams’ career continues to grow, she prioritizes the quieter aspects of her life: picking up her two-year-old miniature goldendoodle, Paul, from day care, attending WNBA games, watching her partner play Ghost of Yōtei. You won’t see her out with a pack of celebrity friends. “I think because I grew up here, I stay out of the business in that way,” says the Los Angeles native, who’s more keen to stay in and play Stardew Valley. “I have big social anxiety. I show up to this party, I take my photos, I go home, and then I talk to my friends that I’ve known since I was in middle school.”
But Williams’ homebody existence doesn’t dampen the wildfire energy Segel first got a hint of during a chemistry read over Zoom also attended by the series’ co-creators, Brett Goldstein and Bill Lawrence. “As soon as we logged off, [the three of us] texted each other, ‘Make the offer,’” Segel says. “So much of comedy is having somebody catch the pass and throw it back. And the energy of that meeting was ‘Jessica Williams is never gonna drop the ball.’”
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“She is the greatest improviser I’ve ever worked with,” says Shrinking co-star Michael Urie, who plays Jimmy’s friend Brian, a lawyer and dramatic new-dad-to-be. He adds that Williams’ counselor bona fides are increasingly all too real. “There have been so many times where I’ve unloaded to her about something and then I have to check myself and be like, ‘This is not your actual therapist. It’s only a character she plays.’”
Growing up in L.A.’s South Bay area, Williams chose theater over sports. She auditioned for her high school’s improv team and, after getting her first laugh, “didn’t look back.” She attended California State University, Long Beach, and joined the famed Upright Citizens Brigade comedy troupe, co-founded by Amy Poehler. A chance audition at 22 brought Williams her big break: a spot as the youngest correspondent in Daily Show history. Her four-year run on the show took her from an unknown to a promising newcomer. She branched out with appearances in Girls and Inside Amy Schumer, then a starring role in the rom-com The Incredible Jessica James and a part in the blockbuster Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. (She played a teacher in both films, as well as in Booksmart. “I’m always a teacher for some reason,” she quips. “I don’t know why people want me to teach their white kids.”)
Her star was on the rise, but in 2019, her then-boyfriend died of an overdose. The two had been together for pivotal years, through her Daily Show breakthrough and burgeoning success. Williams describes it like a car crash. “It felt like I got a part of my soul taken out of me,” she says, decamping from the court to a bench. “It changed me profoundly. It turned me into a crier. I cry all the time. I cry if I’m super happy, if my dog does something really cute, and I cry if I’m really sad and upset. And I’m really sad and upset, as a Black woman, like, all the time. Girl, I be crying. But I had no choice but to fold it into my life choices and how I work and how I act.”
Seven years after losing her partner, Williams still describes herself as uniquely tender. “You come with a ‘Handle With Care’ sign,” she notes, something she says she’ll probably always carry in some form or another. “We’re always grieving. That’s the process, I think, being comfortable with discomfort.” In some ways, the experience made Shrinking feel like the opportunity of a lifetime. “Bill Lawrence wanted Gaby to be for me,” she says. “They were like, ‘We want you to use your sensibilities to bring this character to life.’ It’s really special.”
The show was released to little fanfare in 2023, but by its second season, audiences had gradually clued in to the hidden gem in Apple’s menu. Segel, Williams, Ford, and Urie have all received Emmy nominations for their roles (Segel and Williams twice), and last year the show was nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series. While Williams admits it’s sometimes “hard not to be an overnight sensation,” she’s ultimately grateful for the slow burn: “I don’t know if you’re happier being super-famous. I don’t know what that does to you mentally.”
(She could ask Ford, one celebrity with whom she’s become close. She describes a recent call where she thought something was wrong and he needed help: “Turns out he was shopping at a Paul Smith and was having tacos with one of the salespeople there and was just calling to yap.”)
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Heading into Season Three, Williams might be situated at perhaps her ideal level of fame. “I was at Best Buy a couple weeks ago getting a gift for a friend and some Slim Jims. And this Deadhead looks at me and goes, ‘I don’t know where I know you from, but I have just the fondest notions of you.’ That was like a perfect interaction,” Williams says. “I don’t know if it gets any better as an actor, to have someone feel warmth towards you. Shrinking is a show — and Gaby is a character — that generates warmth. And that feels really nice.”
And given that, as Williams puts it, the cast are “all playing versions of ourselves on the show,” the adoration is that much more satisfying. “The other day, my waxer was like, ‘Is everybody like their characters?’” she says, pantomiming her legs fully up in the air. “It’s a dream job.”
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