Jason Segel Says Michael J. Fox Has Been His ‘Idol’ for Over 20 Years, Shares What He Told the Icon on Shrinking Set

Sometimes, meeting your heroes isn’t such a bad thing, ask Jason Segel, who recently got the chance to work with his “idol” Michael J. Fox on the new season of Shrinking. 

In an interview with ScreenRant, Segel, 46, explained that the Back to the Future star was his biggest inspiration early in his career, not only for his on-screen work, but also for his work ethic.

“When we heard that Michael J. Fox was going to appear on this show, I think we all felt really honored. He’s an idol of mine,” the How I Met Your Mother star shared.

“There was a period when me and my crew — it’s 20 years ago now for me — but when I was doing a TV show and trying to make movies at the same time, and it’s scary and exhausting, and we would literally say to each other, ‘Hey, Michael J. Fox did it.’ We would say it all the time,” he shared.

After decades of using Fox as an inspiration, Segel noted that, while working together on the Apple TV comedy, he “got to tell him” how much he meant to him.

“I got to say like, ‘Hey, I want you to know, in a period when I was trying to figure out what I could do with this job, you were like our true north,'” Segel recalled. “It was really cool to get to say that to him.”

While Segel was working on How I Met Your Mother from 2005 to 2014, he also starred in movies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Despicable Me, The Muppets and I Love You, Man.

Similarly, Fox filmed the Back to the Future movies while starring on Family Ties. The 64-year-old was one of the busiest people in Hollywood during the ’80s, starring in over 20 major projects during the decade.

While talking to PEOPLE in October 2025, the five-time Emmy winner explained how his guest arc on Shrinking came to be. After hearing about the show, Fox said he called the creator, Bill Lawrence, about the fact that Harrison Ford’s character had Parkinson’s disease.

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“I said, ‘You did a show about Parkinson’s, and you didn’t call me?’” Fox recalled. “And he said, ‘Oh, you want to do it?’ And I said, ‘I’d love to do it.’ So he said, ‘Let me think about it, see what I can do.’ So he went to work on it and came up with this concept, it’s really good.”

Fox, who was diagnosed with the same neurodegenerative disease in 1991, then joined season 3 with a three-episode arc as a patient with Parkinson’s.

New episodes of Shrinking season 3 debut Wednesdays until April 8 on Apple TV.