Josh Radnor Explains Why the 'How I Met Your Mother' Cast Doesn't Keep in Touch

In an interview on the podcast Half the Picture, Josh Radnor, who played Ted Mosby on How I Met Your Mother, said that the show’s cast doesn’t really keep in touch. 

According to Radnor, there’s no bad blood among the cast members. But over time, Jason Segel, Neil Patrick Harris, Cobie Smulders, Alyson Hannigan and himself naturally drifted apart. 

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"It’s like college — you have this intense time together, and you think it’s going to last forever, that you can’t imagine not seeing each other every day, but eventually everything scatters and you go on living your life," the actor explained. He also said that he still keeps in occasional contact with Segel, with whom he still exchanges messages, and that he has welcomed Smulders and Harris onto his podcast. 

Radnor also spoke about fans’ expectations regarding the cast. "People really want to believe that Neil, Jason and I are going out to bars together in New York," the actor joked. 

Radnor went on to explain that the cast of a series is like a family, where you don’t choose who will be there, but you end up living together, and that there is an "extremely deep, rich, and probably eternal love," though he added "that it’s not an active love." 

How I Met Your Mother originally premiered in 2005 and ran for 9 seasons, telling the story of Ted Mosby (Radnor), Marshall Eriksen (Segel), Barney Stinson (Patrick Harris), Robin Scherbatsky (Smulders), and Lily Aldrin (Hannigan). In the story, Ted Mosby, in the year 2030, tells his children how he met their mother, recounting the events from the beginning of his adult life alongside the friends he made during that time. The series eventually ended in 2014, with a finale that was considered extremely controversial at the time.