Josh Radnor says the How I Met Your Mother cast is no longer close. In a Sunday appearance on the Half the Picture podcast, he said the group is “not even a little bit” close anymore, even though he stressed that he still has love for the people he worked with for nine seasons.
The comments put fresh attention on the off-screen life of a show that ran on CBS from 2005 to 2014 and followed Ted Mosby and his circle in New York City. Radnor’s point was not that the bond disappeared, but that it changed form: he described the cast’s connection as deep and rich and probably everlasting, while also saying it is not an active love.
He said the distance is ordinary, not dramatic. Radnor said he and Jason Segel send each other texts every once in a while, but he has not seen Segel in a really long time. He added that he saw Cobie Smulders twice on Zoom for her two appearances on the rewatch podcast, and that he has not seen Alyson Hannigan since his wedding to Jordana Jacobs in January 2024. He also pushed back on the idea that the whole group still spends time together, saying people want to imagine him, Neil Patrick Harris and Segel out hitting bars in New York City.
That softer explanation sits alongside something sharper Radnor has already said about the set. In March, he and Neil Patrick Harris discussed tension they had while filming How I Met Your Mother on the How We Made Your Mother podcast, with Harris saying his performance as Barney Stinson annoyed Radnor. Radnor said he felt that tension at the time, but later suggested it may have been a little bit of confusion between actor and character. He also said he was insecure while the show was being shot because the rest of the cast, including Harris, was more famous than him at the time.
So the answer is clearer than the nostalgia around the show: there is still affection, but not day-to-day closeness. The bigger question now is not whether the cast liked one another, but how much of that long-faded bond was ever visible to viewers in the first place.
