Michael J. Fox proves he’s still got the acting bug as he’s set to star in SHRINKING’s fourth season on Apple TV+.
His return is all the more significant due to his long battle with Parkinson’s disease. He originally said he’d stop acting in 2020, but the actor returned to the screen for SHRINKING Season 3 this year. It marked the first time he portrayed a character with Parkinson’s interacting with someone who had the same disease, Parade reported.
He stars alongside Harrison Ford, who portrays a doctor with the disease.
“He was happy that I was sharing my experience with him as a character and helping him do what he needed to do,” Fox said of working with Ford in Season 3.
When asked if he’d return for Season 4 earlier this year, he said, “Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I love Bill [Lawrence] and I’m so happy it’s a success. And it’s such a great time being with those actors.”
He says the show is important to him and wouldn’t hesitate to continue acting in it.
“The reaction to SHRINKING, we really seem to have a lot of investment in it, investment in learning about the disease and [what a] powerful actor Harrison is, the focus of it. The chance to work with him. And like I always say, Harrison … I don’t have to make Harrison believe I have Parkinson’s,” he said. “He has to make me believe he has Parkinson’s.”
Related: Five Things You Can Learn from Michael J. Fox
Fox said Ford is “brilliant.” He’s able to step inside Fox’s shoes — and that’s not easy.
“It’s very difficult when you present a different world than you feel. I don’t know I’m shaking. I don’t know I’m falling. I don’t know I’m stumbling. You know it, but I don’t know it. It’s just normal stuff to me,” he said.
When he first started working with Ford, he didn’t expect him to be as loving as he was.
“I didn’t know what to expect with Harrison because he’s famously a stoic, curmudgeonly guy — and he’s really a sweetheart. He was so affectionate to me and so welcoming to me,” Fox told The Hollywood Reporter.
His time on set has been great because he hasn’t had to worry about his condition or how it was affecting him that day.
“I just do it. It was really good, because for the moments when I say, ‘I’m not going to be able to do this.’ Then I say, ‘Well, I’ll just deal with how I can’t do it in the scene.’ And you get through it,” he said.
The show creator, Bill Lawrence, says Fox is one of his mentors. The two previously worked together on SPIN CITY.
“So to have him back in my world, and as such an inspiring, optimistic, hopeful guy for how he’s navigating this? Not only is it what I need and cherish personally, because I love to know him so much, but I find that it’s so authentic that it makes a lot of the stories we’re telling and that part of the show really work,” Lawrence said.
Season 4 is expected to come out sometimes next year.
Read Next: How Michael J. Fox Takes ‘Each Day as It Comes’ Amid Parkinson’s Battle
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