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William S. Paley TV Fest: How I Met Your Mother (Part 1)
Suit up! The cast and creators of the CBS comedy discuss the show! |
 In our final look at this year's Museum of Television and Radio's William S. Paley Television Festival, we take a look at the night devoted to the new CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother. The entire cast was present, including Josh Radnor ("Ted Mosby"), Jason Segal ("Marshall Eriksen"), Cobie Smulders ("Robin Scherbatsky"), Neil Patrick Harris ("Barney Stinson") and Alyson Hannigan ("Lily"). They were joined by the show's creators, Carter Bays & Craig Thomas, and Pamela Fryman, who has the distinction of having directed every single episode of the series.
Asked how they came up with the show, Thomas replied, "The first thing was the title. Everyone wonders that about their own parents and I just felt like, How I Met Your Mother, that's a story that everyone can relate to. It could have been a movie, or a TV series; we weren't really sure. There was a lot of pressure on it, because I think that people liked that it had a hook or a way in. Everyone was talking about the sitcom being dead and can you get people to watch a sitcom again. So it was an idea that people could sink their teeth into a little bit. And also it was a way to differentiate it from other 20-something shows. It's a life story being told. It's not just 'Let's hang out and talk about dating!' There's sort of a larger picture to it which was exciting to us and 20th and CBS responded really well to it."
"Also I think a lot of the pressure came from ourselves," added Bays. "We really cared about this a lot. When we were first starting to develop it, we came up with a few ideas and actually wrote a script for another pilot. And we liked that one too, but it wasn't personal like this one was. This one felt like something we'd write whether we had a deal to write it or not. From where I'm coming from, it was at a point in my life where I was single and thinking, 'When am I going to settle down and get married?' It was very therapeutic writing in a weird way. The real pressure was for us not to screw it up ourselves."
Recalling what it was like auditioning for his role, Radnor said, "I remember it was raining that day. You get very superstitious as an actor, and I was so excited about this audition. I woke up and it was raining and I thought, 'Oh, bad sign! It's not going to go well.' And it did go well! It was just one of those incredibly pleasant meetings." Bays agreed, bringing up the moment in the show where Ted tells Robin that he loves her, even though he just met her. "The best moment was that big speech at the end of the pilot. He did that and at the end of it there was sort of this pause and our casting director Megan Branman literally said, 'Will you marry me?!' It's like if the casting director is literally proposing to him, this has got to be our Ted."
As for casting Hannigan, Thomas noted that, "We are enormous Buffy dorks thanks to my wife Rebecca. Ted's based on Carter, Marshal's based on me, Lily's based on Rebecca. And I said, 'We're writing a pilot and we're going to make a character based on you.' And she basically said, 'That kind of freaks me out. I'll let you do it if you can get Alyson Hannigan to play me. If you can get Willow!' And somehow it happened!" Hannigan acknowledged she was in fact looking for a comedy at that point, saying, "I wanted to go to work and just laugh all day and be silly and goofy. The first few seasons of Buffy was that job. And then it sort of turned dark and we tried to destroy the world… and that was fun too, but…" Bays then cracked, "You're not gonna like season two! We have this weather controlling machine…"
 Jason Segal, Cobie Smulders, Josh Radnor, Alyson Hannigan and Neil Patrick Harris ---->
"I had done American Wedding in the last season of Buffy and it just reminded me how much I love comedy," continued Hannigan. "And I needed a break from doing that sort of heavy heavy heavy stuff. And I did the whole sort of development deal thing and I would go into these rooms and they'd be like, 'Okay, so what's your dream job?' 'Well, I just want to go to work with funny writers and funny people!' And this is more then I could have asked for. This is what I was talking about. I just didn't have a title or a cast. It completely came true. Everything I was hoping for."
Harris noted that he was coming from a very different perspective then Hannigan when he read for the show. "I was hell bent on doing a drama that pilot season. I had done a show in '99 called Stark Raving Mad that was on for a season," he recalled. "It was a very prototypical sitcom experience with a live audience and there were problems with the characters and the network was really nervous. It was on NBC in a really intense time slot so there was a lot of heat on it immediately. And then the Regis Philbin Millionaire show came along and it sort of clobbered it. The whole process when I was doing that was very frantic. I was more stressed then I'd been on any job. So then it got cancelled and I didn't want to do that again. If I was going to do the live thing I'd rather do it on stage in a more formal setting. So I was looking at dramas. And I read one and I was close to getting that. It was a legal drama."
Harris has received great praise for his performance as Barney, but the actor explained that the role didn't seem to fit him at all at first. "I got the call to come in on this and it was written for like a 35-37 year old, heavy set dark haired guy. Like a Jack Black type. And so I clearly was not going to get that job! So I didn't have any expectations at all. I thought it was really funny and I was just sort of over pilot season and constantly going in and getting rejected for not being this or that. So I just went in and kind of made an ass of myself. I did the dive roll from the laser tag scene [from the pilot] in the room." Harris explained that the tremendous reaction he then received baffled him. "When I was leaving, Megan came running out and said, 'They want to test you!' I went back into their office and they sat me down… and this never happened in my career! And they said, 'We really want you to be Barney. You're the guy that we want for this role.' And as an actor, that's very strange. You never hear that and I thought they were kind of bulls***ing me and seeing if they could lower my quote or something!"
Amongst its positive press, much has been made of the fact that How I Met Your Mother is a traditional sitcom, shot with multiple cameras in front of an audience instead of the single camera/non-audience method used by shows like My Name is Earl and Arrested Development. Harris pointed out that in fact, there is partially a misconception, revealing, "We don't perform in front of a live audience at all. We will work Wednesday through Friday just shooting because there are so many scenes and flashing back and forth. Because of that I think that our comedy tends to be more genuine and more grounded. Even though I'm all over the place, I'm just trying to make you guys [referring to the rest of the cast] laugh, instead of that craziness of, 'That joke didn't land! We've got to rewrite a joke! They're not laughing! Something's wrong!' And I think that sort of separates the show and makes it a little bit unique." As for the laughter heard when the show airs, "It's not a laugh track that you're hearing," Harris revealed. "Once they get four shows together, then they go to the stage next door and an audience comes and watches the show. They record their laughter, to the actual cut together show."
 <---- Jason Segal, Alyson Hannigan and Cobie Smulders
As for why they didn't go the single camera route, Thomas simply explained, "We wanted to do a multi-camera show. We wanted it to have that feeling; to be a sitcom." Fryman was asked why they shoot in such an unusual manner for a sitcom, which traditionally film an entire episode in one evening instead of over the course of several days. "We do it because we have to do it," she replied. "Because the pilot was 60 scenes. And it was impossible to do 60 scenes in front of an audience. I mean there was just no way to do it. Plus a lot of the humor happens in the edit and the jokes would have been lost. And then when the show got picked up, that continued, because there are so many scenes and because we wouldn't really gain anything from having an audience on stage with us. It's much better to put it all together, put it up there, let people laugh and record that. It's just a very honest way to do it. And we've all learned to trust each other. We know what works, we know what doesn't work. We listen to each other. And it's an incredibly healthy way to do this."
Part 2 tomorrow! Thanks to TLupus for the link!
| | [by Róisín (ign.com) ] [0 comments]
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