If you can believe it, it’s been almost exactly 12 years since the finale of How I Met Your Mother aired — and the show’s core cast members are spilling all the behind-the-scenes tea.
For context, Josh Radnor, who starred on the show as Ted Mosby, has a rewatch podcast called How We Made Your Mother, which he hosts alongside the series co-creator Craig Thomas. This week, the duo was joined by none other than Neil Patrick Harris, who, of course, starred alongside Josh as the iconic Barney Stinson.
Recapping their memories of the show, which ran for nine seasons between 2005 and 2014, Neil playfully confronted Josh about their off-camera dynamic during filming, saying: “I always kind of felt that my performance annoyed you.”
Neil went on to explain that he was so “laser-focused” on the comedic elements of his performance that he became “very indifferent” to the “heart and the pathos” of the show because Barney, the witty ladies’ man, “wasn’t written that way.”
“I remember often when we were filming, and I sensed frustration from you because you wanted the scene to be like a good scene,” Neil recalled, “and I was looking at you like, ‘Motherfucker, I’m doing spit takes.’”
“I’m not airing dirty laundry or anything,” he continued. “I’m just saying I think it required multiple perspectives of all of us to create it. But as it was happening, I was sort of like, ‘I think that Josh is just kind of annoyed by the gnat flying around all the time just doing bits.’”
Josh — whose perennially lovesick character, Ted, was the emotional heart of the show — agreed that he sometimes felt tension between himself and Neil even when the cameras weren’t rolling.
“I think it might have been a little bit of confusion between actor and character,” he explained. “Barney was often incredibly almost dismissive of Ted, and you were so good at playing that. I think sometimes I felt dismissed by Neil, but I was being dismissed by Barney.”
Noting how nice it is to “have these conversations now,” Neil described the “disconnect” he felt between himself and Josh when they were on set together, which was made more evident by the fact that Josh was closer with their fellow costar, Jason Segel, who played Marshall Eriksen.
“It’s not like an unresolved issue that I have or anything. I just remember being at craft service or something, and you were personally just more like buddy-buddy with Jason and that we’d say hey to each other or whatever, but like, we were sort of doing different shows when we were filming it,” Neil said. “I remember thinking ‘Is Josh mad at me?’ a lot. Like, ‘Am I doing something to annoy him?’”
In response, Josh also highlighted that the young cast were all at very different stages in their lives and careers, and that probably played a part in it, too.
“I was not a famous person, and I think that I had a harder adjustment with losing my anonymity, being the center of this show,” Josh said. “I didn’t know how to process this in a way that felt healthy, other than kind of trying to keep it at arm’s length.”
After the pair agreed that the tricky dynamic between them wound up working “beautifully” for their characters in the show, Josh said: “If I was like a little pissy or something, I’m sorry. Like, I think that I was just trying to manage a lot of different things and emotions, and they came out sideways sometimes.”
Wow, I feel like I just listened in on a therapy session?! You can watch the podcast clip here. In the meantime, I gotta go rewatch some HIMYM because I forgot how much I loved it in its prime — just don’t remind me about that finale episode…