Josh Radnor is opening up about not wanting to be typecast.
After spending nine seasons starring as Ted Mosby on How I Met Your Mother, Radnor recently told People he’s consciously decided to pursue “different” roles than the hopeless romantic he played on the CBS series from 2005-2014.
“In some ways, I always ran things through a bit of a How I Met Your Mother algorithm in terms of, is this far enough away from the tone of the show,” he said. “I was really looking for roles that just felt really different … that were not lovesick guys in New York City looking for wives.”
The actor continued to explain the work he’s done since, to differentiate his range, including a lot of theater jobs. “My first gig outside of How I Met Your Mother was this Broadway play called Disgraced, and it was about Islamophobia. And I played this pretty ethically shady character. And then, I was on this PBS Civil War show called Mercy Street, where I was a morphine-addicted Civil War surgeon,” he said.
Post-How I Met Your Mother, Radnor has also appeared in Rise, Hunters, Three Birthdays, All Happy Families, Mercy Street and Fleishman Is in Trouble.
However, Radnor is now returning his roots with a rewatch podcast, How We Made Your Mother, as he says it’s “tiring to run from such a big part of yourself and your career.”
“I think that part of me doing this is just to almost call a truce with it and say like, ‘All right, you’ve given me a lot. You’ve taken a lot from me. I don’t want to be at odds with you, so let’s just turn around and see,’” he said. “I think there’s something that will be psychologically healthy for me about it, to re-engage at this age.”
The podcast will premiere on March 10, and Radnor will be its co-host, along with How I Met Your Mother‘s co-creator Craig Thomas.
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