How I Met Your Father EPs break down Neil Patrick Harris' season 2 cameo: 'More is coming'
How I Met Your Father EPs break down Neil Patrick Harris' season 2 cameo: 'More is coming'
ISAAC APTAKER: We talked about what makes the most sense for the story and where Sophie's at. In season 1, it felt like that Robin encounter was really organic to what she needed to hear at that time in her life. Similarly, in season 2, it's going to take a while for the exact situation to reveal itself, but once we fold back around to that Barney moment people will see that he's the exact right person that she needed to run into at that point in her story. There's a little bit of a cosmic sense of her meeting the characters from the original right when she needs them the most. We're well aware fans of the original want to know where these characters are in their lives now and get those Easter eggs, but it's so much more satisfying if in addition to revealing all that, they can serve a really integral role in Sophie's journey. So we're always looking to check both of those boxes.
Does that mean we can expect to see all the other main OG HIMYM characters in cameos in the future?From the short scene in the premiere, it's clear there's more to come with Barney. What can you tease about his future on HIMYF?How is meeting Barney going to impact Sophie? Why is he the right person she needs to meet now?It's been a while since we last saw Barney onscreen in HIMYM and society has changed so much since then, and as a result, so has the way in which we critique pop culture. How did you want to evolve Barney to fit where we are today to make him less problematic in current standards?Did you film all of Neil's scenes at once, or did he return multiple times to keep filming his arc?BERGER: We were very excited — we didn't know it was being torn down and once we learned it that night we were very sad about it. We were blessed to be a part of that Hollywood legacy before it got torn down.
There's a big fan theory that Barney could be Sophie's long-lost father, but since Sophie turned 30 in 2022, she was born in 1992, and Barney had sex for the first time in 1999, so the math doesn't line up. Are you able to officially debunk that theory, or could it still be possible that Barney is Sophie's father?APTAKER: Yeah, we can debunk that, just based on the fact of the math of it. He would be something like a sophomore in high school. It's not really the story that we're trying to tell.
Having his license plate read "LGNDRY" was such a nice touch. Were there any other Easter eggs you brainstormed that didn't make it on screen?APTAKER: "LGNDRY" we settled on right away, but there was a lot of debate on what kind of car Barney would drive. We all thought it would be definitely something European, something very high end, and something dark.
BERGER: With Neil, everything was a discussion, like what is playing in his car? What is he wearing? We really talked about everything we could plant, but also you don't want the moment to be so distracting that people are just staring at the screen seeing everything that they can point to. But yeah, every detail of what was going to be shown was discussed ad nauseam.
APTAKER: As was picking out the suit. Barney is so known for his suits and and making sure that it looked great, which is not hard with Neil, but that it was like a perfect Barney suit if we're going to revisit the character. Our costume designer, who's fantastic, felt the pressure of making sure she nailed it. She had, on the day, so many different shirt and tie options to make sure that everyone was crazy about the one that wound up on screen.
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