E-mail a friendJosh Radnor
airdate March 13, 2008
Actor Josh Radnor's TV credits include guest appearances on ER, Law & Order and a top-billed role in the sitcom, How I Met Your Mother. He made his Broadway debut in The Graduate and has also appeared in Off Broadway productions. Radnor's silver screen credits include Not Another Teen Movie. The Ohio native developed an interest in acting, by accident, in high school. He went on to win the Paul Newman Acting Trophy as an undergrad at Kenyon College and earned his M.F.A. from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
Josh Radnor
Tavis: Josh Radnor stars on the popular CBS comedy "How I Met Your Mother," which is back with new episodes beginning this Monday night. The show, now in its third season, airs Monday nights at the new time of 8:30 and also stars Neil Patrick Harris. Here now a scene from "How I Met Your Mother."
[Clip]
Tavis: You want to explain that, Josh?
Josh Radnor: Classy. It's classy.
Tavis: You want to explain that? (Laughter)
Radnor: Was that the cleanest clip you could find in the whole show?
Tavis: Ironically, it was.
Radnor: Yeah. (Laughter) I just do what I'm told. Just do what I'm told.
Tavis: Nice to meet you.
Radnor: Yeah, good to meet you.
Tavis: I was saying to you when you walked in that I was on a plane, like, last night, and ironically every time I'm on a plane these days, I see this show.
Radnor: American Airlines, good friend of ours.
Tavis: Yeah. It's like every time I fly I'm seeing "How I Met Your Mother."
Radnor: Yeah, it's actually weird, I've had a lot of people come up to me and say, "I never would have found your show, but I saw three episodes on an airline and suddenly, I was a big fan of the show." So it's been great for us to have that. It's weird when you're on an American flight and you look up and you're going like that.
Tavis: So you've seen this yourself?
Radnor: Oh, yeah.
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs)
Radnor: We were flying to New York and Jason Segel and I were sitting next to each other, we were doing a press thing, and Adam Levine, the lead singer of Maroon 5, was sitting across the aisle, and the show came on and he leaned over and he was like "I won't tell, shh."
Tavis: (Laughs) How would you describe the show for those who have not yet discovered it or not been on American Airlines as yet?
Radnor: Well, it's a flashback from the future. It's framed - the framing device is it's 2035, you see these two teenage kids, and you hear a voice and it's the voice of their father who's saying, "I'm going to tell you the story of how I met your mother." This is way back in 2005.
Tavis: This is Bob Saget.
Radnor: This is Bob Saget's voice, the older me. And I'm going to tell you the story of how I met your mother way back in 2005. So that's when the story kicks off. So it's a flashback, but a flashback to now. So then you see this guy, I play this guy Ted Mosby, he's a young architect who's single, looking for love, kind of tripping over himself in these kind of adventures he has with his friends that are all kind of - I think of that Kierkegaard quote that says life only makes sense in reverse, but it has to be lived forward.
So you have this guy looking back in reverse, but you have me living my life forward and kind of thinking it's not going to work out, and we know from the framing device that it does work out, so we watch this.
Tavis: I'm glad we got this on tape, Jonathan, because I just thought I heard "How I Met Your Mother" and Kierkegaard in the same sentence.
Radnor: You did, you did. (Laughter) Well, you did. But that's not just - the show is really smart, and that's something that people are a little shocked by, because you're not used to it from a multi-camera sitcom. But the writers are just these really smart guys, really smart, funny, and people - it doesn't talk down to you, so.
Tavis: I was about to ask you, to your point now, what you think makes the show work? Because there's just been so much written lately about comedies and they're not working the way they used to and so reality TV, of course, is what it is, and comedies, some people think, are just almost a bygone.
Radnor: Well, I think a lot of the stuff with the multilateral shows is that laugh track is just annoying. It's, like, telling you, like, this is funny, this is funny, laugh at this. And you're - because I've been at tapings of shows, like, great shows that you're in there on the night of the taping and it's really funny. Like, there's a great kind of vibe and you're just laughing, and then you watch it on TV and it somehow feels reduced and it feels like you're being told - you're being lectured about when to laugh.
And one of the interesting things about our show that not a lot of people know is that we don't tape in front of an audience. We shoot so many scenes, because there's nonlinear narrative. We'll sometimes have 40 to 60 scenes in an episode; a normal sitcom will have five scenes.
So it takes us three whole days to shoot the show. You can't make an audience sit there that long, they get a little restless. So we don't tape in front of an audience. And what I think this does, it keeps us honest, it keeps us grounded. We're not playing to get a laugh from someone 30 feet away. We rehearse it once, the crew laughs, we do it again, the crew laughs less.
By the end, no one's laughing. (Laughter) So I think it keeps you honest, it keeps you playing to each other, it keeps it a little more grounded, so.
Tavis: I can see the point about honesty. I guess the flip side of that - I'm not an actor, but I guess the flip side would be not having that audience there to play off of to know whether or not you hit your mark.
Radnor: Yes, and that's why you have to put great faith in the writers and the director. We have the best director in the world, her name's Pam Fryman. She's directed almost every episode of the show. And she has, like, an infallible radar about when it's working, what needs to happen. Yeah, you'd think that'd be more of a problem, but after doing, I don't know, over 50 episodes, you kind of have an internal radar of what - where the joke lives and all that stuff.
Tavis: I always crack up with people like you, because you have obviously found your niche, you're on a hit television show in primetime on a major network, and you became an actor because you, like, went with somebody for moral support -
Radnor: Oh, you did a little research.
Tavis: Yeah, just a little bit. Just a little bit.
Radnor: Yeah, in high school, I think it was my sophomore year, and I was a swimmer, an honor student, like, student government. Like I was all, like, I'm going to get into a good college, like that was kind of the thing I was doing in high school. And then a girl I was friends with wanted to audition for "Oklahoma" and she was incredibly nervous.
So she said, "Just come down to the auditorium and sit with me while I audition." And I was sitting there and I was watching these guys get up, and I was, like, I think I could do this. Probably better than these guys. (Laughter) And someone pointed at me and said, "You auditioning?" And I went, "Yeah." And I did, and I got one of the leads.
And then it was like this -
Tavis: I hate people like you.
Radnor: Yes, yes. Everything's been easy for me in my life. Everything.
Tavis: Yeah, I hate people like you.
Radnor: But it was just like this revelatory moment where I - it was actually the next year I did "Cabaret," I played the emcee in "Cabaret," and that was kind of the "Oh my God, I need to keep doing this." And then I just never stopped.
Tavis: This is something that would only matter to you and maybe the people who went to school there. I have never been to - you went to Canyon?
Radnor: Canyon, yeah, in Ohio.
Tavis: I've never been there, but it's just the most - it's the strangest thing. I literally was going through my mail earlier today and a friend of mine who I've known forever, I had no idea she went to Canyon, was back on the campus for something last week, sent me a postcard.
Like, today I get a post - what are the chances I get a postcard today from Canyon, and you're on the show?
Radnor: Doesn't surprise me. (Laughter) It's all perfect.
Tavis: I thought that was kind of funny. So you grew up in Ohio.
Radnor: I did, yeah, (inaudible).
Tavis: A lot of attention lately to your state.
Radnor: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's that - yeah.
Tavis: So what do you make, having grown up in this place, of all the attention that has been placed and will be placed on Ohio just a few months down the road?
Radnor: Oh, it just feels like such a great deal of attention to put on my little state, I don't know. I live in California now. What can I say? Franklin County, my votes how I think they should vote. The rest of the state - what are we going to do?
Tavis: (Laughs) Is all screwed up, huh?
Radnor: What are you going to do? I don't know. I love Ohio, I love being from there, but it always seems - man, it's like it used to be Florida, now it's Ohio, and I'm like oh, god.
Tavis: There are people who get complexes about that, though. If you're in Florida right now, you got to have a complex about living in Florida.
Radnor: (Laughs) Yeah.
Tavis: Here we go again.
Radnor: I know, I know. It's tough, but what are you going to - what are you going to do?
Tavis: You've been political at all? Are you a political person?
Radnor: Yeah, I used to be - I'm kind of going through a little transition.
Tavis: You're an honor student, you had to be political.
Radnor: I was - yeah, student government. Shark tank. But I used to - (laughter) - I used to be much more political. But what I found was, I would start every morning, like, reading "The New York Times." Unemployed actor, start the morning, big pot of coffee, read "The New York Times." I would read the entire paper. I'd be sweating and shaking from all the coffee, and I would just be, like, super-concerned about the world.
Like, is no one reading this? Like, we're in trouble. And I would know who the bad senators were and who - and I was really political. And I realized I was just getting myself worked up, and it's like not watching the local news. You save yourself a lot of heartache by just, like, not knowing about what happened down the block.
And lately, I wouldn't call it disillusionment, because I still - I love politics, I still follow it. I love voting. It's one of my favorite things, the sticker and seeing the lines of people. But I keep wondering - I keep wondering if the way you make a difference in the political - the only way is to become a multimillionaire and host a fundraiser for the candidate so you can talk to them about what you care about, because living in California, it's so dependably blue that I don't know how we get our voice heard other - well, I guess I'm getting my voice heard.
But it's a difficult thing. And I'm also, even if - I'm a big Obama fan, but even if he's the president, I don't know how much change one person can bring, and I think we give a lot of credit to their political leaders as if they're capable of change. Because they're actually followers, they're just reflecting what's going on with the people. So I guess we have to change the people.
Tavis: I like that.
Radnor: And we'll see how we do that, I don't know.
Tavis: So now if you can take all that, find some humor in it, and write it into an episode of "How I Met Your Mother."
Radnor: Put it on our show?
Tavis: Yeah, "How I Met Your Mother."
Radnor: The political episode.
Tavis: There you go.
Radnor: Everyone loves that. No more sex, all politics.
Tavis: Well, I don't know how that would rate.
Radnor: Yeah, huge ratings. Yeah, they're going to love that. (Laughter)
Tavis: Nice to have you on the program.
Radnor: Hey, thanks for having me.
Tavis: "How I Met Your Mother," on CBS, starring Josh Radnor.
Back to March 13, 2008