How I Met Your Mother Star Josh Radnor Reveals Running Away from 'Lovesick Roles' like Ted Mosby and Why It's 'Tiring'

How I Met Your Mother lead Josh Radnor opens up about moving on from the sitcom and struggling to find roles that are different from Ted Mosby. Find the details inside.

Written by Ipshita Chakraborty , Entertainment Journalist

Updated on Feb 07, 2025 | 02:00 PM IST | 6.5K

CC: IMDB

Josh Radnor led How I Met Your Mother for nearly a decade, playing the eternal optimist, Ted Mosby. But since the CBS comedy wrapped in 2014, he has sought to move on from the show but found great difficulty in finding different roles.

Radnor approached new ventures with great care, often questioning whether they were far from his lovesick HIMYM character. Looking for distinct roles, he avoided projects similar in tone and theme to the sitcom. He told People that he did not take on projects "for a long time."

"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? I was really looking for roles that just felt really different," he told the outlet.

Immediately following his show, he appeared in the Broadway drama, titled Disgraced, which deals with Islamophobia, playing a morally shady and ethically ambiguous character. He has also appeared in PBS's Mercy Street, playing a Civil War surgeon addicted to morphine.

Both of those roles were a significant departure from the lovelorn New Yorker professor he had played for nine years. Even now, he said he is choosy and turns down roles that feel too similar to previous work.

"I still, sometimes, roles will come to me that I can feel in the DNA, that it's a little too close, and I don't play those roles. I almost always say no to those roles," he said.

After years of trying to move beyond HIMYM, Radnor is finally embracing his connection to the series. He's launching How We Made Your Mother, a rewatch podcast co-hosted with series co-creator Craig Thomas and produced by Alek Lev.

Radnor explained, "It's tiring to run from such a big part of yourself and your career. I think that part of me doing this [rewatch podcast] 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.'"

This project will allow him to revisit the show with new eyes and examine the opportunities and challenges it brought to his career. He reflected, "I think there's something that will be psychologically healthy for me about it, to re-engage at this age."

Josh Radnor's podcast debuts on March 10. Meanwhile, How I Met Your Mother is still streaming on Hulu and Netflix.