Warning: This story accommodates spoilers from “Daddy,” the Season 2A finale of “How I Met Your Father,” now streaming on Hulu.
Is Barney Stinson actually a modified man? Properly, he’s making an attempt to be! Throughout Tuesday’s “How I Met Your Father” Season 2A finale, Sophie (Hilary Duff) sneaks away from Robert (John Corbett) when she thinks he could also be her dad — and crashes proper into “How I Met Your Mom” girls man, Barney.
Through the encounter, he reveals that he’s not the crass man he as soon as was towards ladies, one thing that modified when he had his daughter. To strengthen that, he’s electrocuted each time he does make a remark — one thing Neil Patrick Harris’ bodily comedy was completely good for.
“You write this a lot after which go, ‘Neil?’ and he fills in the remaining,” director Pamela Fryman, who helmed practically each episode of “How I Met Your Mom” and returned for “Father,” tells Selection.
Harris agrees: “I like to go to city on that. I’m a giant bodily comedy man. It appeared like a fantastic comedic methodology to acknowledge Barney’s shortcomings whereas nonetheless staying true to his core individual… I assumed that was a really good name as a result of it allowed recognition of the world and humanity and the way in which one is meant to behave and but, it’s nonetheless stored — in a comedic method — Barney’s engine is at all times operating and revving. You’ll be able to’t actually cease it. As a lot as Robin tried, as a lot as followers may need, Barney’s Barney. That’s how he was designed.”
“How I Met Your Mom” aired on CBS from 2005 to 2014, and featured many storylines — virtually all of Barney’s — that haven’t aged properly. That was additionally a part of the explanation for the change in his character’s methods.
“‘How I Met Your Mom’ was some time in the past. So much has modified and folks develop and but it surely’s Barney,” says Fryman. “We have now to acknowledge this character that we’ve liked for therefore lengthy. It appeared good to me.”
Whereas Harris didn’t “simply blindly say sure” when requested to make a cameo, after a Zoom name and lining up timing, it felt each “beautiful” and “surreal” to swimsuit again up — particularly with the arc that Sophie goes to start out searching for her actual father, simply as Barney did.
“He’s having these conversations a few daughter looking for out a greater relationship along with her father as a brand new father of a daughter and sitting speaking to feminine who’s as engaging as Hilary Duff, it’s innate Barney fodder,” says Harris. “He desires to say genuine issues as a result of he feels genuine issues, however he’s saying it to somebody that he would usually desires to say one thing crass to! That’s who he’s. It was intrinsic and properly written.”
He additionally felt an authenticity to the story as each he and Duff are mother and father in actual life. “I’m now having a dialog along with her now as a human who, 10 years in the past, had little blobby infants that simply form of sat there. Now I’ve like a totally shaped pre-teen daughter. So to have the ability to speak about these dynamics, I used to be positively a modified actor once I was sitting there talking all of that. It was good to have the ability to have an authenticity to these scenes in a form of bizarre, meta method,” he explains.
To make issues much more private, when Barney reveals Sophie a photograph of his daughter Ellie, it’s an image of Harris’ 12-year-old daughter, Harper.
Harris and Duff had by no means labored collectively and it was enjoyable to observe, Fryman remembers. “She was so nervous to satisfy Neil, so nervous to behave with Neil. She was shaking. We had a little bit of downtime as a result of it was raining exhausting, in order that they bought to speak and spend a while with one another. It was it was fairly magical.”
In fact, the door is open if Harris desires to carry Barney again once more sooner or later.
“I believe it’s Barney the film,” Fryer jokes. Harris provides, “I believe it’d be Barney, the spinoff. We are able to pull a straight-up ‘Frasier.’ Simply name it ‘Stinson!’ Exclamation mark on the finish.”
Season 2 will return to Hulu with new episodes starting Could 23.