Did you participate in that kind of therapy?

Listen, one of these guys has become my actual therapist, and it totally changed my life.

He's absolutely incredible.

And I had done therapy throughout my life, and, you know, like they said, I had spent a lot of time talking about the same stuff from my childhood or this or that.

And to finally be, um, given some direction about, "Hey, next time this happens, this is what I want you to do." Sometimes as reductive as like, "I want you to say this sentence next time this person does this." And all of a sudden, your life starts operating more smoothly, and, um, and then you start to pick up the why of it all.

And as a matter of fact, the last lines of this season, uh, that we just f- you know, finished, that aired, Season 3, um, Jimmy finally gets to the dirty underneath of why he can't move forward, this, this idea of who would want me now? You know, I'm all covered in scars.

That came from a real therapy session I had with, uh, with Barry, where I had to show up to this thing where I was going to be around somebody who I, uh, who I had kinda come up with.

Sounds like you're choking.

Oh

... are, are very much about that, um, a- about night terrors.

Um, and that was kind of how I exorcized those feelings.

Dispatches From Elsewhere was something different for me.

I had reached this moment of existential crisis around 33 years old, where I didn't know why I was doing any of this stuff, and I was no longer really enjoying myself making things.

And I think I had gotten maybe too strategic about what I was trying to write.

And, um, it also coincided, I'm a sober guy for a long time now, but soon 13 years or so, and, and it coincided with me getting sober, and all of a sudden not thinking things were funny anymore.

Sounds like you're choking.

How do you feel like the show differentiates the difference between sensitivity as a strength versus sensitivity as a liability?

Wow, what a great question.

Look, I think that part of what the show is about is about learning to open up to the people around you, and that it is a safe space.

So even when people are kind of poking fun at Jimmy-

Which do you think has the deeper hold on him this year, grief or abandonment?

I actually don't think it's abandonment.

I think that what Jimmy is struggling with, which we, we did a really, we tried to do a really honest job writing it in the finale, is "Who's gonna want me now that I'm covered in these scars?"

... what comes after that? Had they already been cooking up a little bit, shrinking?

Yeah, so what I understand is that Brett and Bill had had similar ideas about a therapist going through a crisis, and they, they had a talk, they pitched their ideas to each other, and they were close enough that they figured out, like, how to combine them, so it became one idea.

And then they came to me and gave me, like, a very loose pitch of a premise and asked if I wanted to play the guy, and I, I said yeah, and, um, I write as well and they were very kind and generous of letting me be a co-creator and help write the pilot with them, but, uh, honestly, like, having written a bunch of stuff from scratch, you know?

Yeah.

... that age.

But I, I was getting better and better, and the head of the acting department came to me, and he said, "Hey, I think that you might be good at this.

How about you and I put on a little play? And I'll direct it," he said, "and you and this other guy will star in it.

We'll just do it in a little black box theater, 30 people, that's it." I said, "Okay." And so we put on a very complicated play, and there was this audience out there of adults I didn't recognize.

How did that all come about?

I'm really lucky.

I got kind of a free ride on this one in that, uh, I got a call from Bill and Brett.

They had both had an idea about a therapist going through a nervous breakdown, and they got in touch with me and asked if I wanted to play the guy.

Actually, the truth of the story is apparently I was on a walk and I was listening to, uh, I know what I was listening to at the time.

I was listening to Signed, Sealed, Delivered by Stevie Wonder.

Okay.

And so they said, "You should watch Forgetting Sarah Marshall.