How I Met Your Mother star Josh Radnor has admitted that the cast of the beloved CBS sitcom are “not even a little bit” as close as they used to be.
Airing from 2005 to 2014, the series followed Radnor’s Ted Mosby and his group of friends in New York City as he told his children the story of how he met their mother.
Jason Segel, Cobie Smulders, Alyson Hannigan and Neil Patrick Harris made up the ensemble cast.
During a recent appearance on the Half the Picture podcast, Radnor was asked if he was still close with his co-stars.
“No,” he responded, “not even a little bit.”
“I don’t mean that in any dramatic way. It’s just… 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,” he continued, referring to his March conversation with Harris on the How We Made Your Mother podcast.
Radnor added that he and Segal “send each other texts every once in a while when something reminds us of something funny on set... But I haven’t seen him in a really long time.”
Meanwhile, Radnor said he has seen Smulders “mostly on Zoom” after she appeared on the How I Met Your Mother rewatch podcast twice, and Hannigan attended his 2024 wedding to Jordana Jacobs, but he hadn’t seen her since.
“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 because you’ve seen each other every day for so long. And then it just disperses and you just go out and live your life.”
“I think that there’s a yearning, especially when a show is so centered around friendship — people really want to believe that me and Neil and Jason are hitting bars in New York City together. They really want to believe that,” Radnor continued.
“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.”
How I Met Your Mother was a consistent ratings smash during its initial run, with the early seasons also earning strong reviews from critics. It was nominated for 28 Emmy Awards, including a nod for Outstanding Comedy Series.
It later spawned the short-lived spinoff How I Met Your Father, starring Hilary Duff, which ran for two seasons on Hulu from 2022 to 2023.
