Michael Urie on Making a Meal Out of a Monologue on ‘Shrinking’
Actors love to see a monologue coming. However, a monologue is rarely so nice that you get to do it twice, especially on TV. Leave it to Michael Urie and the AppleTV+ dramedy “Shrinking” team to craft a speech so good that it needs to be delivered two times to fully appreciate it.
Urie’s character, Brian, steps up in “Shrinking” Season 2 as the bridge between the friend group and Brett Goldstein’s character, Louis, the man responsible for the accident that killed Jimmy’s wife. An empathetic mission for Brian becomes the catalyst for a crucial healing journey for both Jimmy and his daughter, Alice (Lukita Maxwell). Neither character would have approached forgiving Louis if it wasn’t for Brian, and his season-defining monologue that not only recaps his developing friendship with Louis, but it also dovetails with his journey to becoming a father and a more compassionate person. He also manages an aside about musical theater-inspired names for his potential future baby.
Urie delivers the monologue for the first time when Brian realizes that Alice is tempted by her own curiosity about Louis. The performance needed to capture Brian’s natural rambling tendency but also reveal how guilty he feels about being there for Louis.
The writers gave Urie the full text in advance so that he could learn it, even before he fully understood the context of what Brian was saying to Alice. “I spent a lot of time with it. It’s such a gift,” Urie tells Variety. “Brian is all over the place in the speech. He goes all over the map. There’s parentheticals. There’s hard right turns. It feels like he prepared this speech and he’s flying off the cuff.”
The monologue comes around again when Jimmy discovers Brian and Alice at dinner with the man he holds responsible for upending their lives. Urie’s delivery is a nervous ramble when Brian first confesses to Alice. However, the lived-in part of it becomes obvious when he repeats the confession, almost verbatim, to Jimmy. The near exactness of the speech in both scenes helps the audience realize that Brian has embedded this story in his soul, and it also lightens the devastation of Jimmy encountering the trio together.
“I tried to start every thought, every sentence in the same way,” Urie says of the encore delivery. “Then at times Brian realizes, ‘Oh, this is for Jimmy. I need to adjust this. I just need to get to the end of it because Jimmy needs to know, and this is the easiest and cleanest way to tell him.’ I wanted to honor that this is the same speech, but also acknowledge that the second time is for a very different audience under very different circumstances.”
The monologue became a breakout moment of Season 2, and clearly impressed Emmy voters, who awarded Urie his first-ever nomination in July. The actor was trying to get in a few hours of rest between night shoots while filming Season 3 when his phone started buzzing nonstop to inform him of the honor.
“It was an out-of-body experience, because I was dead asleep. I was so happy for, obviously, myself, but for the show and Harrison [Ford], Jessica [Williams] and Jason [Segel],” the actor says. “It was really special to know that what we did resonated, that we were reaching people.”
Urie proved he can handle a monologue, but he’s not planning anything so wordy for the Emmys. “I’ll have something in mind,” he jokes, “but it won’t be as long as Brian’s monologue. I promise you that.”
Urie’s character, Brian, steps up in “Shrinking” Season 2 as the bridge between the friend group and Brett Goldstein’s character, Louis, the man responsible for the accident that killed Jimmy’s wife. An empathetic mission for Brian becomes the catalyst for a crucial healing journey for both Jimmy and his daughter, Alice (Lukita Maxwell). Neither character would have approached forgiving Louis if it wasn’t for Brian, and his season-defining monologue that not only recaps his developing friendship with Louis, but it also dovetails with his journey to becoming a father and a more compassionate person. He also manages an aside about musical theater-inspired names for his potential future baby.
Urie delivers the monologue for the first time when Brian realizes that Alice is tempted by her own curiosity about Louis. The performance needed to capture Brian’s natural rambling tendency but also reveal how guilty he feels about being there for Louis.
The writers gave Urie the full text in advance so that he could learn it, even before he fully understood the context of what Brian was saying to Alice. “I spent a lot of time with it. It’s such a gift,” Urie tells Variety. “Brian is all over the place in the speech. He goes all over the map. There’s parentheticals. There’s hard right turns. It feels like he prepared this speech and he’s flying off the cuff.”
The monologue comes around again when Jimmy discovers Brian and Alice at dinner with the man he holds responsible for upending their lives. Urie’s delivery is a nervous ramble when Brian first confesses to Alice. However, the lived-in part of it becomes obvious when he repeats the confession, almost verbatim, to Jimmy. The near exactness of the speech in both scenes helps the audience realize that Brian has embedded this story in his soul, and it also lightens the devastation of Jimmy encountering the trio together.
“I tried to start every thought, every sentence in the same way,” Urie says of the encore delivery. “Then at times Brian realizes, ‘Oh, this is for Jimmy. I need to adjust this. I just need to get to the end of it because Jimmy needs to know, and this is the easiest and cleanest way to tell him.’ I wanted to honor that this is the same speech, but also acknowledge that the second time is for a very different audience under very different circumstances.”
The monologue became a breakout moment of Season 2, and clearly impressed Emmy voters, who awarded Urie his first-ever nomination in July. The actor was trying to get in a few hours of rest between night shoots while filming Season 3 when his phone started buzzing nonstop to inform him of the honor.
“It was an out-of-body experience, because I was dead asleep. I was so happy for, obviously, myself, but for the show and Harrison [Ford], Jessica [Williams] and Jason [Segel],” the actor says. “It was really special to know that what we did resonated, that we were reaching people.”
Urie proved he can handle a monologue, but he’s not planning anything so wordy for the Emmys. “I’ll have something in mind,” he jokes, “but it won’t be as long as Brian’s monologue. I promise you that.”