Twelve years after “Doogie Howser, M.D.” went off the air, Neal Patrick Harris is returning to television in a new half-hour comedy on CBS called, “How I Met Your Mother.” He had also starred in the NBC sitcom, “Stark Raving Mad,” which was canceled before finishing its first season in 2000.
Harris said he was “hellbent” against doing another sitcom, but feels good about the new show and his place in it, where he gets to deliver some solid punch lines and set up some key moments.
The show itself has some promise — more on that in tomorrow’s Herald — but Harris is taking a turn playing the smarmy, slick friend of the protagonist, a role that he says he’s excited about and is an extension of the dude’s dude versionof himself that he played in the recent stoner comedy, “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.”
I caught up with Harris at the TV Critics Association press tour, following a session about “How I Met Your Mother.”
Harris is now 32, twice the age of his famous fictional doctor of more than a decade ago, and said he’s actually only visited White Castle “once in Manhattan, probably hammered at 4 o’clock in the morning.”
Harris watches a lot of reality TV, saying he TiVo’s just about every game-oriented reality show out there. Perhaps signaling the standing of reality shows and their star power, Harris said, “I got to talk to Rob and Amber (of “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race”), which was pretty exciting.”
The decline of the sitcom is something Harris said he feels strongly about. One of his all-time favorites is “Three’s Company,” and he enjoys NBC’s new take on “The Office” — as well as the original — and Fox’s “Arrested Development.”
Perhaps feeling beholden to mention a CBS show, he added, “I’ve been pleasantly surprised by ‘Two and a Half Men.’”
He said he watched a few episodes of the show on the plane. We’ve all been there. You just try to make the best of an “I’m-trapped-at-33,000-feet-and-they’re-making-me-watch-“Two and a Half Men”-which-happens-to-be-on-the-network-that’s-now-paying-me” moment.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
