Jason Segel

Episode notes

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When you see Jason Segel on the screen, he’s often playing someone’s best friend, or maybe a down-on-his-luck leading man. His characters are sincere, and very endearing.

He got his start on screen in his late teens, when he starred alongside James Franco and Seth Rogen on the short-lived cult tv show: Freaks and Geeks. Jason played Nick Andopolis, a charming slacker from a Michigan suburb with dreams of being a rock star. From there, he landed a bunch of other roles in How I Met Your Mother, I Love You, Man, and Knocked Up, just to name a few. He’s also a really talented writer. He wrote and revived The Muppets for a new generation.

His first writing gig was the romantic comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall. In it, he portrayed struggling musician Peter Bretter. The film starts with a breakup, and ends with a musical about Dracula.

These days, you can catch Jason Segel on Shrinking. It’s a comedy in which Jason plays a therapist who, while grieving the death of his wife, decides to take a new approach with his clients. Instead of withholding judgment, he offers it freely, and he gets very, very involved in the lives of his patients. What could possibly go wrong?

When Jason talked with Bullseye in 2020, he’d just created and starred in a very different show: Dispatches from Elsewhere. It follows the lives of a group of regular people who discover a hidden world.

Jason talked to Bullseye about how he works humor into the tone of a show like Dispatches from Elsewhere. Plus, all about Freaks and Geeks, and what makes the Dracula song in Forgetting Sarah Marshall work.