While several How I Met Your Mother cast members guest-starred on spinoff How I Met Your Father — including Cobie Smulders and Neil Patrick Harris — Josh Radnor’s Ted Mosby never made a cameo.
Although Mosby would say, “You can’t cling to the past because no matter how tightly you hold on, it’s already gone,” HIMYM co-creator Craig Thomas revealed the real reason why Radnor, 50, wasn’t on the spinoff.
“We weren’t really involved. Put it this way, it would’ve had to be a really good idea for me to come to Josh to say, ‘Can you be in this show?’ It didn’t end up going that way, so it’s okay,” Thomas, 53, told PEOPLE while standing beside Radnor at the Jan. 11 benefit concert for the Rady Children’s Hospital of San Diego at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom.
HIMYM ran for nine seasons on CBS from 2005 to 2014, while the Hulu spinoff starring Hilary Duff lasted two seasons from 2022 to 2023.
Hulu did not renew How I Met Your Father for a third season.
During the spinoff’s run, at least six HIMYM cast members reprised their roles as guest stars — most notably Smulders as Robin Scherbatsky in the season 1 finale and Harris as Barney Stinson in season 2.
Before HIMYF ended, fellow HIMYM main cast member Jason Segel expressed that he was open to appearing on the spinoff. Meanwhile, Alyson Hannigan said in August 2024 that she wasn’t ready to watch the spinoff, although her husband, Alexis Denisof, guest starred as his HIMYM TV anchor character Sandy Rivers.
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At the Jan. 11 event, Thomas and Radnor teased that they’re still spending time together, partly because they’re working on a “little project together.”
“Well, I’m thrilled that Josh moved to New York because now Josh and I will see each other a lot more,” Thomas explained. “I’ll tease that we’re going to be doing a little project together, that we’re going to be putting into the world in the spring, but I’m not going to say what it is.”
Radnor added to PEOPLE, “We’ll give you a tip-off later,” to which Thomas confirmed, “We’ll tell you first when it’s time, okay? We really will.”
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