Shrinking star on pride at season 2 issue ‘we haven't seen explored on TV’

Urie spoke exclusively with RadioTimes.com about the new season, and revealed where we find his character at the start of the new run.

He said: "At the start of the season he's now a happily married man. We saw him get married to Charlie at the end of season 1. And at the beginning of season two, he's helping Jimmy with his patient who pushed her boyfriend off a cliff at the end of season 1.

"So he gets to play lawyer again, this is one of my favourite colours on Brian. He's just an estate lawyer, so he deals with wills and trusts, but every once in a while he gets to put on his pretend criminal law hat, and so we get a little bit of that."

Urie continued: "But the big thing in the first part of season 1 is that Jimmy has been keeping his affair with Gaby from Brian, and Brian accidentally finds out, and he's furious.

"He doesn't understand why Jimmy would keep a secret that big from him, and it starts him on a bit of an existential spiral about their friendship and about whether or not they even should be friends.

"And something that I'm really proud of is that the writers came up with this very authentic problem that people who have come out of the closet have, and I can relate. When you're in the closet, you're not your whole self, and Jimmy and Brian became best friends when Brian was living the life of a straight person.

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"And then their friendship bridged the gap of coming out, survived coming out of the closet and now, many years later, Brian is wondering if they would even be friends now, if they met today as a gay man and a straight man, would we even become friends?

"I think that's a really interesting and a real problem that we haven't really seen explored on television. So that's something I'm very proud of and excited about for people to see."

The new season is also set to feature a flashback episode, as was recently revealed by co-creator Bill Lawrence, who called the experience of putting that one together "nerve-wracking".

Shrinking season 2 will premiere globally with the first two episodes on Wednesday 16th October on Apple TV+, followed by one new episode weekly, every Wednesday until 25th December 2024. You can sign up to Apple TV+ here.

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