Jessica Williams On Gaby’s Loving Intrusiveness for ‘Shrinking’

Have you ever had a coworker that always inserts themselves into your business and offers up advice without being asked? It’s not harmful or annoying, but they are always cheerful to tell you why you should do something. In Apple TV+’s lovely ode to moving on, Shrinking, Jessica Williams’ Gaby doles out advice with the best intentions–with the most epic water bottle clutched firmly in hand.

Within the first ten minutes of the first episode of Shrinking, Jason Segel’s Jimmy casually calls Gaby intrusive, and Williams wears that descriptor as a badge of honor. It’s not an issue for Williams at all.

“I love it,” Williams says, enthusiastically. “It’s good, because, as a character, it makes it easier to get into hijinks–and who doesn’t love that, as an actor. It’s an overstepping of feeling like you care. Another version of that is control or wanting to control your immediate environment. As someone who grew up to playing The Sims, I relate to being intrusive, but it’s great to get that feedback since it informs me so much of who she is as a person. She oversteps by showing up with Liz by telling her to back off, among other times this season. Those traits were so much fun to play.”

When Gaby and Liz (played by Christa Miller) begin to interact, you think you are about to see fireworks. In a way, you are, since Williams and Miller have a natural, magnetic chemistry with one another. Both women are headstrong, lovingly meddlesome, and incredibly intelligent. They are not afraid to vocalize their opinions on anything. Instead of making them adversaries, Shrinking unites them.

“I love that relationship so much,” she says. “I watch a lot of reality shows like Real Housewives, so I wondered how I would deal with a housewife of Pasadena. I know Christa Miller, and I were excited to shoot that [first] scene. We wanted to do the clapping and the step forwards and the steps back, and we wanted to get into those microaggressions in that way for that scene. I love the love they have for each other, especially towards the end of the season when Gaby gets her rock.”

The gentlest step up Gaby takes at the beginning of their first confrontation? “Yes, that’s iconic,” Williams adds.

There are multiple scenes throughout this first season where Gaby and Liz are talking openly about their emotions while sitting outside Jimmy’s house. There is something about the air between them, especially when Alice, Jimmy’s daughter, is present. It feels as if Alice can ask anything of these two women, and they can dole out honesty back to her. They show Alice honesty, because, perhaps, they weren’t shown the same honesty when they were her age.

“I love the scene where Liz and Gaby are talking to very frankly to Jimmy about sex even though he doesn’t want to hear it,” she says. “Teenage girls have sex, dude. Since Gaby is Alice’s godmother, I think she feels this auntie tenderness towards Alice without trying to not overstep. She wants Alice to be informed, and it’s important for Gaby to know that Alice doesn’t need to have sex if she doesn’t want to. It’s important to hear women talking like that on screen. Lukita [Maxwell] is such a great actress, so those scenes with her and the great Christa Miller were something I really looked forward to getting to.”

When Jimmy and Gaby kiss at the end of episode six, I personally had a very loud, vocal reaction. Since Gaby was close friends with Jimmy’s wife, Tia, it makes us wonder if Gaby realized that she was attracted to Jimmy. The beginnings of the exploration of this relationship was something that Williams was aware of before she signed on to do the show. Hey, sometimes you listen to your gut instinct when you’re drunk at a party, and it becomes something.

“That was always the plan when I came onto the show,” Williams admits. “I didn’t know much about her at first, and we found out who she was together. Even before I ever signed on, we were in talks of that happening, but we didn’t know what the fallout and consequences were yet. I think Shrinking is a show about blurring lines and crossing boundaries, and I think that was one of those things where I don’t think Gaby or Jimmy were anticipating. They were both there and they were both drunk, and sometimes it’s just like that. We didn’t want to tip that off to anyone, so we wanted to surprise everyone.”

Production designer Cabot McMullen allowed the actors to design the space, so it felt authentic to each of the therapists’ styles and voices. Segel and Harrison Ford occupy spaces that feel more in line with a traditional office, but I would be drawn to the color and vibrancy of Gaby’s space.

“It was really fun, because I knew that they wanted her to balance Jimmy’s grief,” she says. “Paul is grieving too, so they wanted her to be brighter and more colorful. With the wardrove and production design, it was pretty fun to fill her out. I just had to do what Harrison and Jason weren’t doing. For example, I knew when I walked in that I wanted scrunchies on her lamp since I have a friend that does that. I brought a bunch of them from home and put them on there, and they just kept it throughout the whole season. I kept adding stickers to Gaby’s water bottle with every passing episode, and I knew, in her office, that she was a “messy wire” person. It was nice to feel so comfortable in her space.”

Getting a rock from Liz is a special occurrence, and Gaby is desperate to get one all season. It serves as a sign of trust and friendship, and, well, Gaby probably wants to feel like she’s part of an elite club of rock owners. The question remains…where does Gaby keep her prized rock?

“She is definitely the kind of person who has a messy purse, so I bet she keeps it in there,” Williams says with a laugh. “Or maybe, in season 2, she will wrap it in a nice sack and wrap it around a water bottle, so it dangles. That would be cute, right?”

Shrinking is streaming now on Apple TV+.