Neil Patrick Harris sings, dances and goes behind the camera
On Monday nights Neil Patrick Harris fans stay home to watch the latest episode of How I Met Your Mother. On Monday mornings, the cast of the show gets together for a table read of the episode they are shooting that week. That’s also when they find out how many days they have to work. And if Barney Stinson is only in a B story, NPH realizes he gets an extra day off.
"We have a wonderful schedule that way," Harris said after a read on the set at 20th Century Fox. "On Mondays we usually go into the production offices, we do a table read and then we’re done while they get notes from the studio and network and then they re-write. Then Tuesday we come in, we rehearse from 9:30 am, we do a run through of the show on the stages, everyone kind of walks from set to set and we’re done at 2:30 pm and then they keep re-writing. Then we start filming Wednesday. We film Wednesday, Thursday, Friday all day. If you’re in the scenes you’re there, obviously, and if you’re not then you don’t have to be there. It actually works well, because like in this script Barney’s not in one whole story line so I probably won’t have to work most of one day. It works out nice."
Pushing the envelope
How I Met Your Mother is a racy show, and sometimes they take shots at pop culture entities who might be sponsoring the show. The network notes in this case are usually more practical and not drastic changes to the plot.
"I will say, I was on another sitcom before where they would radically change things," Harris said. "There was a lot more network and studio involvement and they were much more concerned about its success and so there would be a whole new show the next day, sometimes. [On HIMYM] the studio and the network have been relatively hands-off. They get breakdowns of what the show’s going to be well before they hear it now so they don’t change the structure too much."
The upcoming episode "Hooked," to guest star Carrie Underwood, won’t require Harris’s services all three days. Perhaps it’s time for a well-deserved day off. Recent episodes have worked Harris exhaustively. In the 100th episode, "Girls Vs. Suits," Harris performs a musical number about how much his character love suits. Story continues on following page.
Watch the behind the scenes of Barney’s "Suits" number on the 100th episode of How I Met Your Mother.
