By Mallory Mattingly
Though he retired from acting in 2020, Michael J. Fox returned to the screen for Season 3 of the Apple TV+ show SHRINKING.
After his guest role on the legal drama THE GOOD FIGHT in 2020, Fox decided to call it quits on his acting career, calling his decision “non-emotional and kind of ok,” per Variety.
“I was doing …THE GOOD FIGHT — I confused it with Kiefer [Sutherland’s] show [DESIGNATED SURVIVOR] because both shows, I had similar issues,” Fox shared with the Los Angeles Times. “They’re both very legal. I’d have to read screeds of legalese. I couldn’t get it. When I did THE GOOD FIGHT, I had just seen one of my favorite movies, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, and there was a great scene where Leo [DiCaprio] goes back in his room and just lays into himself in the mirror and just goes insane and drinking and crying at his lack of ability to memorize lines and I found myself, similarly, in front of a mirror and I went: ‘Meh! I can’t do it. I can’t do this anymore.’ So, let’s just get this puppy done as best I can and…move on with my life. So that’s what I did.”
Related: Five Things You Can Learn from Michael J. Fox
Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s 1991 at the age of 29. SHRINKING follows a character, played by Harrison Ford, who also lives with the disease.
As Fox began to watch the show, he couldn’t believe how well it portrayed life with the disease. Its accuracy encouraged him to reach out to creator Bill Lawrence so that he could play a role in the show.
“The depth of character, the quality of relationships, the language — it’s just a beautiful show,” Fox told The Times. “And I thought, just do that for its own sake. I don’t have an agenda. Don’t have to be coming back into acting or anything. It’ll be fun. And there’s Harrison Ford, which is insane.”
Even though Fox came out of retirement for SHRINKING, he has no plans to return to acting full time, emphasizing that this is “not the beginning of any campaign to reestablish my career.”
It also allowed to be himself on-set in a way he hadn’t experienced before.
“It was the first time ever I got to show up on-set, and I didn’t have to worry about am I too tired or coughing or anything,” Fox told PEOPLE last year. “I just do it. It was really good, because for the moments when I say, ‘I’m not going to be able to do this,’ then I say, ‘Well, I’ll just deal with how I can’t do it in the scene.’ And you get through it.”
SHRINKING Season 3 is now streaming on Apple TV.
Read Next: How Michael J. Fox Went From ‘Pain, Regret’ to Gratitude
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