Josh Radnor spent nine seasons playing a man surrounded by his closest friends on How I Met Your Mother, but the actor says the real-life cast does not have the same everyday relationship more than a decade after the sitcom ended.
Asked whether he is still close with Neil Patrick Harris, Jason Segel, Cobie Smulders and Alyson Hannigan, Radnor gave a surprisingly direct answer: “No. Not even a little bit.”
He immediately clarified that there was nothing dramatic behind the distance, according to Entertainment Weekly’s report on his appearance on the Half the Picture podcast.
Instead, Radnor described five actors who spent an unusually intense period of their lives together and then gradually moved in different directions. He still speaks warmly about his former costars and says the affection built during the show’s nine-season run remains, even if it is no longer an active part of their daily lives.
Radnor Compared the Cast to College Friends
Radnor compared the experience to college, when people can spend nearly every day together and struggle to imagine a time when that constant contact will no longer be normal.
“You can’t imagine not seeing each other every day because you’ve seen each other every day for so long,” he said. “And then it just disperses, and you just go out and live your life.”
That is essentially what Radnor says happened after How I Met Your Mother ended in 2014. The cast had spent 208 episodes together over nine seasons, but once the shared job disappeared, their careers, families and lives took them in different directions.
“I have love for all these people,” he said, describing that affection as “deep and rich and probably everlasting,” even though it is “not an active love.”
He Still Has Contact With Several Former Costars
The five actors have not completely disappeared from one another’s lives. Radnor said he and Segel occasionally exchange texts when something reminds them of a funny moment from the set, although he has not seen his former onscreen best friend in person for “a really long time.”
Smulders has appeared twice on Radnor’s How We Made Your Mother rewatch podcast, which he hosts with series co-creator Craig Thomas. Radnor joked that as a result he has mostly seen her over Zoom. Hannigan was present at Radnor’s 2024 wedding to Jordana Jacobs. He said he does not believe he has seen her since.
The geographical distance is real as well. Radnor noted that Harris lives in New York while Segel, Smulders and Hannigan are primarily based in California, leaving the former cast scattered even before their separate professional schedules are taken into account.
Radnor and Neil Patrick Harris Have Already Addressed Their Past Tension
Harris provides perhaps the clearest evidence that Radnor was not revealing a hidden cast feud. Earlier this year, Harris joined Radnor and Thomas on How We Made Your Mother, where he and Radnor openly revisited tension they sometimes experienced while filming the sitcom.
Harris wondered whether his highly comedic approach to playing Barney Stinson had frustrated Radnor, whose role as Ted frequently required him to carry more emotionally grounded scenes. He remembered sometimes sensing frustration from his costar while Harris was concentrating on physical comedy and jokes.
Radnor acknowledged that there had been tension. He suggested that the relationship between Ted and Barney may occasionally have blurred into the actors’ real-life dynamic and also admitted that his own insecurities during the show’s rise contributed to the friction. Radnor later described it as “fascinating and kind of healing,” according to Page Six.
Radnor Says the Cast Was More Like Family Than Chosen Friends
Radnor believes some of the surprise surrounding his comments comes from the premise of How I Met Your Mother itself. Ted, Marshall, Lily, Barney and Robin were written as a group whose lives remained deeply intertwined for years, making it easy for viewers to imagine the actors developed the same permanent friendship off screen.
Radnor sees the relationship differently. He said the cast was ultimately more like a family than a group of friends because none of them actually chose one another.
“We were cast. We didn’t choose each other,” he explained, adding that family-like dynamics naturally developed after so many years working in the same environment.