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Last January, Michael J. Fox received a presidential medal of freedom in recognition of his Parkinson’s advocacy work from outgoing president Joe Biden. In USA Today, he wrote about how the incoming Trump administration could help find a cure for the disease he was diagnosed with in 1991 at age 29. They’d be wise to take the actor turned advocate seriously: His Michael J. Fox Foundation has funded more than $2.5 billion in Parkinson’s research over the last 25 years, raising more than $100 million in research annually. “Our foundation directs more money towards Parkinson’s research than the federal government,” Fox tells Vanity Fair. When asked for an update on working with President Donald Trump a year later, Fox retorts, “He’s busy with Greenland. More pressing concerns, I guess.”
If all goes to plan, Fox says he’ll soon meet with US Department of Health and Human Services head Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “I’m going to Washington next month and hopefully talk to Kennedy and find out what the government’s game plan is on addressing brain research in general and taking a more serious approach to some of these things that are soluble,” he says. “It’s just a weird disease. We always say genetics loads a gun and environment pulls the trigger. We’re trying to figure out what’s biological and what’s chemical.”
In season three of Shrinking (which premieres on January 28), coping with a Parkinson’s diagnosis fuels Fox’s storyline opposite Harrison Ford, who plays a therapist living with the degenerative brain disease. At this point in the conversation, a stoic, but engaged, Ford interjects: “Michael raises more money for and has done more Parkinson’s research than almost anybody in the world.”
Ford in season three of Shrinking.Kevin Estrada/Apple TV
Fox in season three of Shrinking.Courtesy of Apple
“It’s a credit to our great people,” Fox replies. “It’s frustrating to know we’re putting everything we can into it, and it would be nice to have the government behind us, but it seems that they’re involved in other things that have less impact on peoples’ lives.”
In 2004, Fox and Ford were photographed shaking hands at a charity event where Nancy Reagan advocated for stem cell research in finding a cure for illnesses like Alzheimer’s, which afflicted her husband, Ronald. “I’m sure I was very excited to see Harrison,” says Fox, glancing across the Zoom screen at a smiling Ford. “And Nancy Reagan—she was a force.” The former first lady was one of few conservatives at the time to publicly support embryonic stem cell research, which Republican lawmakers are still fighting to restrict at the federal level. Fox supports stem cell research in finding a cure for Parkinson’s disease. “For someone like Mrs. Reagan to step outside of political or ideological groupings and just speak to what she believes…is tremendously valuable,” he told reporters at the 2004 event.
Fox poses alongside Ford and his wife Calista Flockhart at a 2004 charity event honoring former First Lady Nancy Reagan, who advocated for stem cell research in the study of diseases like Parkinson’s.Vince Bucci/Getty Images
After playing the conservative son of former-hippie parents on Family Ties, then a know-it-all political strategist on Spin City, Fox returns to his TV roots in Shrinking, which last year earned Ford the first Emmy nomination of his career. Given Fox’s longtime friendship with series creator Bill Lawrence, whom he previously worked with on Spin City, the invite felt overdue. “It was a short and profane conversation,” Fox recalls. “I said, ‘You’re doing a fucking show about Parkinson’s with Harrison fucking Ford, and you don’t call me?’” Ford tilts his head back with a chuckle.
“Well, I’m calling you now,” Lawrence said, to which Fox replied, “‘No, I’m calling you.” It was a fitting moment, as Lawrence has “a history of pulling me back out of retirement,” Fox says. “I did Scrubs [which Lawrence created] in the early ’00s after I’d retired from Spin City, and so I knew he’d make it happen. He always was a talented kid. Talented kid.” Fox shakes his head, “He’s what, 60 years old?” (Lawrence is 57; Fox is 64.)
Although nearly two decades younger than a now 83-year-old Ford, both men, and their characters on Shrinking, grapple with their mortality. “We’re on the same shitty train to sucksville,” Fox’s character, Jerry, says to Ford’s character, Paul, as both men await Parkinson’s treatment. Later in the season, the curmudgeonly Paul finds renewed zest for his profession—and strategies for living with his diagnosis—when he provides therapy to other people with Parkinson’s disease, including Gerry. “The thing about therapy is it’s a talking cure, but there’s no talking cure for Parkinson’s, so those two worlds have always had an uneasy relationship,” Fox explains. “I couldn’t have gotten through Parkinson’s without therapy, but you find yourself educating the therapist as much as they’re educating you. You have to paint a picture of the ground you’re living on. And it’s very hard to explain to people.”
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Savannah Walsh
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