Michael J. Fox is pausing his retirement to join the cast of Shrinking season 3.
Fox, 63, will guest star on the Apple TV+ series starring Harrison Ford and Jason Segel, according to Deadline. Details of his role are under wraps as season 3 is currently in production.
By joining the Emmy-nominated dramedy, Fox will be reunited with creator Bill Lawrence. The pair previously worked together on Spin City from 1996 to 2001.
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This is Fox’s first role since he announced his retirement from acting amid his battle with Parkinson’s disease in his 2020 memoir No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality.
How Michael J. Fox Inspired Portrayal of Parkinson’s Disease in ‘Shrinking’
“There is a time for everything, and my time of putting in a 12-hour workday, and memorizing seven pages of dialogue, is best behind me … I enter a second retirement,” he wrote at the time. “That could change, because everything changes. But if this is the end of my acting career, so be it.”
Parkinson’s is a progressive disorder that affects the nervous system and the parts of the body controlled by the nerves, per Mayo Clinic. In most patients, symptoms typically start slowly as the first symptom may be a barely noticeable tremor in one hand. Other symptoms include slowed movement, rigid muscles, impaired posture and balance, speech changes and loss of automatic movements. There is no cure for the condition.
Before retiring, Fox’s last onscreen role was as a guest star on The Good Fight in 2020. However, he did make an appearance in his docuseries, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, which detailed his struggles with Parkinson’s.
Despite retiring, Fox teased that he would make an exception if the right role came along.
“I would do acting if something came up that I could put my realities into it, my challenges, if I could figure it out,” Fox said in an April 2024 interview with Entertainment Tonight.
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Shrinking is seemingly the perfect fit for Fox as Lawrence, 56, previously revealed that Ford’s character, who also suffers from Parkinson’s, was inspired by the Back to the Future star.
“It’s cool to get to write about things you care about now,” Lawrence said in a December 2024 interview with People. “And Michael J. Fox is my first mentor. So we wanted to represent it in hopefully an inspiring and not sad or tragic way.”
Lawrence teased that the third season would show a “portrait of living with” the condition.
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