List of How I Met Your Mother characters
The American sitcom "How I Met Your Mother" premiered on CBS on September 19, 2005. Created by Craig Thomas and Carter Bays, the show is presented from the perspective of Ted Mosby in 2030 ("Future Ted") as he tells his children how he met the titular mother. The show lasted for nine seasons and 208 episodes; the finale first aired on March 31, 2014.
How I Met Your Mother
"How I Met Your Mother" was inspired by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas' idea to "write about our friends and the stupid stuff we did in New York", where they previously worked as writers for "Late Show with David Letterman", among others. The two drew from their friendship in creating the characters. Ted is based loosely on Bays, and Marshall and Lily are based loosely on Thomas and his wife. Thomas' wife Rebecca was initially reluctant to have a character based on her but agreed if they could get Alyson Hannigan to play her. Hannigan was looking to do more comedy work and was available. Josh Radnor and Jason Segel, who were cast as Ted and Marshall, respectively, were not well known, though Segel had been a cast member on the short-lived "Freaks and Geeks" and a recurring guest star on Judd Apatow's follow-up show, "Undeclared". The role of Barney was initially envisioned as a "John Belushi-type character" before Neil Patrick Harris won the role after being invited to an audition by the show's casting director Megan Branman. Pamela Fryman invited Bob Saget to be the voiceover narrator, Future Ted, explaining to him that the show would be like "The Wonder Years" but "kind of into the future". Saget either went to the television studio and recorded the narration while watching the episode, or did so separately and rerecorded with the episode if necessary. He normally did not attend table readings but did so for the last episode.