Josh Radnor, who played Ted Mosby on How I Met Your Mother, has admitted that the cast of the CBS sitcom are not as close as fans might imagine. The 52-year-old actor shared that he and Neil Patrick Harris experienced tension on set during the show's nine-season run.
Tension on Set
On the Half the Picture podcast, Radnor was asked if the quintet of actors is 'still as close' as they were while filming. He responded: 'No, no, not even a little bit… I don't mean that in any dramatic way.'
Referring to his How I Met Your Mother rewatch podcast with show co-creator Craig Thomas, Radnor explained: 'We had Neil [Patrick Harris] on the podcast, and he and I had a really interesting conversation about some of the tension we had on set that was fascinating and kind of healing.'
Different Approaches to the Show
On a two-part episode of the How We Made Your Mother podcast in March, the 53-year-old Harris and Radnor discussed 'frustrations' while filming. The tension centered on Harris focusing on the comedy, while Radnor was more preoccupied with the emotionality of the scenes.
'I remember often days when we were filming and I sensed frustration from you because you wanted the scene to be a good scene and I was looking at you, like, motherf***** I'm doing spit takes,' said Harris, laughing. 'As it was happening, I was like, I think Josh is annoyed by the gnat flying around all the time, just doing bits.'
Radnor echoed Harris and said he thought, in hindsight, he experienced a degree of confusion between the actor and the character. He explained: 'Barney was often dismissive of Ted and you were so good at playing that, that I think I sometimes felt dismissed by Neil, but I was being dismissed by Barney… But when I look back on it, I'm so delighted by our weird chemistry.'
Cast Dynamics After the Show
Radnor described the tension as the 'secret sauce' in their on-screen relationship, as Harris reiterated that they were essentially playing different shows and as a result he sometimes thought Radnor was 'mad' at him. In the same podcast episode, Radnor described struggling with the loss of his anonymity as he became the star of the hit sitcom, having come into it with few prior screen experiences compared to his co-stars.
Elsewhere in the Half the Picture podcast, Radnor said that he still messages Jason Segel and Cobie Smulders 'every once in a while' when he's reminded of something funny that happened on set. He said he last saw Alyson Hannigan at his wedding to Jordana Jacobs in 2024.
'I have love for all these people,' he said. 'It's like college, where you have this very intense time together and you can't imagine not seeing each other every day cause you've seen each other every day for so long, and then it just disperses and you go out and live your life.'
Radnor added: 'I think it's a little more like family than friends in that you don't get to choose your family. We were cast. We didn't choose each other. And family dynamics come out to play when you're in an environment like that for so long. But you also have love that is quite deep and rich and probably everlasting, but it's not an active love. Acting is like love affairs that you have, and then you move on.'
