Josh Radnor reveals 'How I Met Your Mother' cast is not close anymore

Brendan Morrow, USA TODAYThu, August 20, 2026 at 1:27 PM UTC

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Wait for it: Josh Radnor is getting real about where he stands with the cast of "How I Met Your Mother."

The actor, who played Ted Mosby for nine seasons on the CBS sitcom, shared on the "Half the Picture" podcast that the show's stars haven't exactly remained a close-knit group.

When asked if the cast is still "as close as you were" while they were making the show from 2005 to 2014, Radnor answered honestly: "No. Not even a little bit." But he clarified that he doesn't mean this "in any dramatic way," comparing the situation to a group of friends growing apart after college.

"I have love for all these people," he said, adding, "It's like college, where you have this very intense time together, and you can't imagine not seeing each other every day, because you've seen each other every day for so long, and then it just disperses, and you just go out and live your life."

Radnor starred alongside Neil Patrick Harris, Jason Segel, Cobie Smulders and Alyson Hannigan on the romantic comedy show, which centered on a group of friends living in New York City as the future version of Radnor's character, voiced by Bob Saget, recounts the events leading up to him meeting his wife.

After almost a decade on the air, the show wrapped with a controversial series finale in March 2014. Since then, the stars have gone off in separate directions: Radnor said on the podcast that he hasn't seen Segel in a "really long time," though they text occasionally, nor has he seen Hannigan since she attended his wedding in early 2024.

The actor acknowledged that this may not be what fans want to hear.

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"People really want to believe that me and Neil and Jason are hitting bars in New York City together," he said. "They really want to believe that. It's a little more like family than friends, in that you don't get to choose your family. We were cast. We didn't choose each other. And family dynamics come out to play when you're in an environment like that for so long. But you also have love that is quite deep and rich, and probably everlasting. But it's not an active love."

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Since 2025, Radnor has hosted "How We Made Your Mother," a rewatch podcast where he and cocreator Craig Thomas revisit the show. Harris appeared as a guest on a March episode, where he and Radnor had an honest conversation about some "tension" that could exist between them while filming. Harris noted he would sometimes wonder whether Radnor was "mad" at him, while Radnor said that because Harris' character, Barney, was often "dismissive" of him, "sometimes, I felt dismissed by Neil, but I was being dismissed by Barney."

"When I look back on it, I'm so delighted by our weird chemistry," Radnor said. "I think that there was something in that tension that you're describing, that would come out sideways a little bit sometimes, that was actually the secret sauce in making that make sense."

Though the entire cast may not share a closeness anymore, Segel and Smulders had their own "How I Met Your Mother" reunion in 2024, when she began playing a recurring character on Segel's Apple TV series "Shrinking." Smulders and Harris also reprised their roles with cameos in the spinoff series "How I Met Your Father."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Josh Radnor reveals 'How I Met Your Mother' cast is not close anymore

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