The 'Shrinking' scene that almost made Christa Miller cry

You may think you know Liz, the quintessential next-door neighbor in “Shrinking.” Rich housewife, empty nester, with so much time on her hands she’s in everybody else’s business. But as played by Christa Miller, she becomes something else entirely, proving herself a formidable sparring partner to her neighbor, Jimmy (Jason Segel) and his colleagues Paul and Gaby (Harrison Ford and Jessica Williams, respectively).

You may also think you know Christa Miller. After all, she starred on hit TV sitcoms for 23 years, from “The Drew Carey Show” straight through “Scrubs” and “Cougar Town.” But her nuanced turn as Liz after decades in broad comedy comes as a surprise even to those who know her best. Even to herself.

Created by Bill Lawrence, Brett Goldstein and Segel, the Apple TV+ series centers on Jimmy, a therapist who lost his wife Tia (Lilan Bowden) a year earlier. Drowning in grief ever since, he has neglected his daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell), so Liz jumped in to mother her. With a mix of compassion and exasperation, she pushes Jimmy to start behaving like a father again. But when he does just that, Liz finds it hard to step back.

“I didn’t want Liz to be a meddlesome neighbor in someone’s life,” Miller says on a video call from her home office. “She wanted to do the right thing, and then it was hard to stop, and she was hearing from people that she needed to separate [from Alice].” One of those people is Gaby, who confronts Liz in a passive-aggressive battle royal. In response, Miller’s approach to one scene was so different than the writers expected — including Lawrence, her husband — that they rewrote the course of Liz’s story.

By phone, Lawrence recalls the moment. “Liz says, ‘I once overheard you and Tia talking in the driveway about me, and you said, "Oh she’s such a mom."' Gaby says, ‘You are a mom,’ and Liz says, ‘You didn’t mean it as a compliment.’ No one on the writing staff thought that was an emotional scene at all; they thought it was just a fight between two strong women. But Christa got so emotional when she shot it; she was on the verge of tears. That immediately defined her character in the writers room, because we went back in and said, ‘OK, this is a woman that’s struggling with the fact that she raised three kids and now they’re gone, and beyond that she’s not sure who she is or why she matters or why she should have any self-esteem.’ Christa changed her character into one that was much more vulnerable than we thought.”

Liz’s relationship with Gaby soon takes an unexpected turn from mild antagonism into friendship, which emerged from the actresses’ own relationship. “Jessica and I have different comic timing, so when we’re together, it’s funny,” Miller says. “And I’m also obsessed with her in real life. I want her to be my best friend.” The writers have mined that off-kilter camaraderie to great effect.

In an effort to help Jimmy behind his back, Liz keeps tracking Paul down all over Pasadena, telling him what Jimmy’s been up to and demanding he do something about it. “My wife was very excited about being the one who’s just going to go and bust Harrison Ford’s b—,” Lawrence says. Paul, in turn, accuses Liz of constantly "raw-dogging" him, completely unaware that the slang term actually refers to having sex without a condom.

“Everyone in the cast is so good that I’ve just gotta go A-game,” Miller says, noting that Segel in particular has given her the freedom to take risks. “Jason has taught me so much. He said, ‘This is a safe set, and if you’re embarrassed it’s OK, you can try something that doesn’t work.’ It’s hard to try something comedic and hear crickets, but I just started doing that, having my heart open, and no one cares, we’re just going on to the next take.” She’s long been reticent to be what she calls “a schmactor — someone who talks about acting — but on this show, I did embrace that I love acting and I want to talk about it.”

Liz’s husband, the loving and offhandedly hilarious Derek, is played by Ted McGinley. Late in the season, after Liz has a sweet exchange with Jimmy’s guesthouse resident and patient, Derek asks her, “Are you sad because he was so kind to you?” She nods, and leans on him. But only for a couple of seconds.

“That might be a little from my life,” Miller admits quietly. Lawrence says, “I don’t like to do this often, because I feel it takes away from her credit, but yes, I wrote that line specifically about her.” On an earlier Zoom interview with Lawrence and McGinley, Miller says, “Bill was saying the loveliest things about me, and then Ted jumped on board, and I was so overwhelmed I burst into tears.”

Quickly returning to comic callback form, she adds, “They raw-dogged me.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.