For nine seasons, How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) turned five friends navigating love, heartbreak, careers, and adulthood into one of television’s most beloved sitcoms.
From 2005 to 2014, Josh Radnor (Ted), Jason Segel (Marshall), Cobie Smulders (Robin), Alyson Hannigan (Lily), and Neil Patrick Harris (Barney) spent 208 episodes portraying a friendship so close-knit that fans often assumed the actors shared a similar bond off-screen.
But over the years since the show ended, the cast members have talked about their equations with their castmates, and their revelations have occasionally burst that bubble.
Radnor, 52, who played Ted Mosby on the CBS show, recently opened up about how close he is with his former co-stars, and his answer surprised many fans.
“Sounds like there’s a second group chat he just wasn’t added to,” one said.
HIMYM cast went in different directions after the show’s controversial finale
How I Met Your Mother was the defining sitcom for a generation, and at the heart of the story was Ted finding the future “Mother” of his children and his decade-long friendship withMarshall, Robin, Lily, and Barney.
Its running jokes and catchphrases, such as “Legen–wait for it–dary” and “Challenge accepted,” became part of the pop culture vocabulary, while the nonlinear storytelling kept viewers hooked on the identity of the “mother.”
However, the conclusion of the show drew significant backlash, especially over the creative decisions to undo Barney and Robin’s romance, the demise of the “Mother” (Tracy Mosby played by Cristin Milioti), and Ted going after Robin once again.
Despite dividing the fans, the show’s finale drew nearly 13 million viewers and marked the end of an era for the five actors, who went on to pursue very different careers.
Radnor moved toward more dramatic television, appearing in shows such as Mercy Street and Hunters, while Segel picked up more writing and producing gigs and Hannigan went for hosting and voice work.
Smulders and Harris probably had the most successful post-HIMYM careers, with the former bagging an MCU role (Maria Hill) and several other projects, and the latter remaining highly active across television, OTT, and Broadway.
The actors have occasionally spoken about their time together, and while some cast members have maintained a strong bond throughout, others have drifted apart over time.
“That’s not abnormal. I’m not close with people I worked with 15-20 years ago,” one user commented about the latter.
Josh Randor is “not even a little bit” close with HIMYM co-stars
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Josh Radnor appeared on the Half the Picture podcast on Sunday, August 16, 2026, and during a conversation about the show, was asked if he was still close with his HIMYM co-stars.
“No. Not even a little bit,” he answered.
He clarified that he didn’t “mean that in any dramatic way,” and that they are still very much on speaking terms, just not that frequently.
“I have love for all these people,” Radnor said. “It’s like college where you have this very intense time together.”
“You think you’re going to be — 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,” he added.
“I think it’s a little more like family than friends in that you don’t get to choose your family,” he continued.
“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 a love affair that you have, and then you move on.”
Neil Patrick Harris often wondered if Josh Radnor was “mad” at him on set
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In 2025, Neil Patrick Harris, who brought to life the fan-favorite character of Barney Stinson, told People magazine on 20 years of HIMYM that the cast “were all just having the best time” filming the show’s early seasons, even though they thought they “might get canceled all the time.
Earlier in 2026, Radnor welcomed Harris on his HIMYM podcast How We Made Your Mother, which he co-hosts with the show’s co-creator, Craig Thomas.
“He and I had a really interesting conversation about some of the tension we had on set that was fascinating and kind of healing,” Radnor revealed on Half the Picture.
Harris shared on Radnor and Thomas’ podcast that he felt “insecure” while playing Barney and believed his character was “broken,” wearing his humor and signature suit as “armor.”
He also said that he thought his performance “annoyed” Radnor.
Harris explained that he was “laser-focused” on making the comedy happen on set: “I was very indifferent to the heart and the pathos of it because I wasn’t written that way; and I know that was your job, right?”
In the show, Barney and Ted are quite polar in their personalities: the former is an over-the-top philanderer with jokes ready at the drop of a hat, and the latter is a lovelorn, sentimental romantic.
“I remember often when we were filming, and I sensed frustration from you because you wanted the scene to be like a good scene and I was looking at you like, ‘Motherf***er, I’m doing spit takes.’”
While Harris does not have any “unsolved issue,” he remembered wondering at times if Radnor was “mad at” him during filming.
In response, Radnor admitted that he too felt the tension at times: “I think it might have been a little bit of confusion between actor and character.”
“Like 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.”
Radnor added that despite the awkwardness, he was “delighted” by their “weird chemistry” that brought the two characters’ banter to life.
Before the show’s finale aired in 2014, Harris called Radnor the “soul” of their show in a panel, and said, “I’ve been so blessed to play your best friend.”
Cobie Smulders previously spoke about behind-the-scenes secrets involving Josh Radnor
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Cobie Smulders, who played Robin Scherbatsky, has appeared on How We Made Your Mother a few times, but Radnor said he has “seen her mostly on Zoom” and not in person.
She and Radnor shared many scenes, given they were each other’s on-and-off love interest throughout the show, and even acted in a few intimate scenes.
Smulders said on the podcast that she would whisper “extremely inappropriate” things in Radnor’s ears before the camera started rolling, describing the acts that may have “transpired” between their characters.
When Thomas asked her to give an “appropriately-worded example,” both Smulders and Radnor said they couldn’t.
“Just think of the worst possible thing, and that’s really what it was,” she said.
Back in 2023, Smulders reunited with Jason Segel, who played Marshall Eriksen, playing lovers on the Apple TV show Shrinking.
Speaking with People magazine about going from portraying a platonic relationship with Segel to a romantic one, Smulders chalked it up to their close relationship.
“We spent a lot of time growing up on that show,” she said. “It just sort of clicked in.”
Smulders says despite them both having “a lot of experiences” since the show’s conclusion, she still feels “the same closeness to Jason.”
“We’ve always been in each other’s lives, always, always felt very connected to him,” she added. “We’ve had a strong friendship.”
As for the others, Hannigan and Harris attended Smulders’ 2012 wedding to actor-comedian Taran Killam.
In 2024, Smulders agreed with Hannigan’s idea of appearing in a potential retelling of HIMYM: “Always, anytime… I love those people, so to be back in a scene with any of them I would do.”
Smulders and Harris made cameo appearances in the HIMYM spinoff show, How I Met Your Father, reprising their legacy roles.
Alyson Hannigan has said she wants a different retelling of HIMYM
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On Half the Picture, Josh Radnor said that he last saw Alyson Hannigan, who portrayed Lily Aldrin, at his 2024 wedding to psychologist Dr. Jordana Jacobs.
A year before that, he shared an Instagram photo with Hannigan after a catch-up lunch and said, “So sweet to reconnect and drop in and talk about all the things.”
Hannigan has always maintained that she is close to all the cast members, and has often spoken about the show with a sense of nostalgia.
In 2024, after Smulders starred in How I Met Your Father, she showed Hannigan “a bunch of pictures from the set.
“It kind of made my heart hurt,” Hannigan told People magazine. “I was like, ‘I don’t think I’m ready to watch.’ It just made me sad because I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s the same set.’”
Elsewhere in the interview, she recalled being “pretty emotional” while filming the final season: “We all took the year to really appreciate all the moments that we’ve had so many of, in however many seasons we did it.”
She also told the outlet that she would love to feature in a HIMYM retelling where Lily and Marshall get to tell the story this time instead of Ted himself.
“It’s like, ‘No, no, no, no kids. That’s not how it happened,’ and then it starts out with, ‘We were a lot older, first of all …’ and then we can just do the show again,” she said.
Jason Segel admitted to “getting tired” with filming HIMYM later seasons
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Josh Radnor said on Half the Picture that he and Jason Segel, who played Marshall Eriksen, “send each other texts every once in a while,” but he hasn’t seen him in “a really long time.”
Segel was “really unhappy” while filming the later seasons of HIMYM, but it had more to do with the gig itself than his co-actors.
During a 2023 Comedy Actor Roundtable hosted by The Hollywood Reporter, Segel said that he “grappled” with the feeling quite a bit.
“I think the thing that I was confronted with is that it’s really great to make the decision of ‘f**k it, I do what I want,’ but unfortunately there’s a system of permission in place where people will go, ‘We don’t give a s**t [what you want to do].’ Like, ‘Good for you, man,’” he said.
He also questioned whether he had what it takes to make it in a different genre, such as drama, and was afraid he wouldn’t be considered a “real actor” after being in a comedy sitcom for so long.
In 2025, on the outlet’s Awards Chatter podcast, Segel added more on the sentiment.
“It was an amazing time. It was an electric time. But I also was getting a little tired, and I was starting to not enjoy myself so much,” admitted Segel. “And that was a bummer because I was doing such cool things.”
However, despite his attempts to distance himself from the show, he told Entertainment Tonight later that year that he would be open to bringing Marshall back on How I Met Your Father.
“Those people changed my life, and I would do anything they ever asked me to,” he said.
“Hearing Ted say this hurts a little.” Fans of HIMYM were divided over Josh Radnor’s confession
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