Send to KindleNEIL PATRICK HARRIS INTERVIEW
By Abbie Bernstein
Neil Patrick Harris has been appearing in so many places lately that he’s single-handedly giving credence to rumors of human cloning. He’s starring in his seventh season as the irrepressible Barney Stinson on CBS’s hit comedy HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER (and its syndicated reruns), created and executive produced by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas. Meanwhile, Harris’ younger self is entertaining a new generation with the syndicated run of his earlier hit comedy DOOGIE HOWSER, MD, he’s hosted the Tonys, he’s hosted the Emmys, he’s starred as the title antihero of Joss Whedon’s Internet musical sensation DOCTOR HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG (all of these are viewable on DVD and/or YouTube), he directed the revival of the musical RENT at the Hollywood Bowl, he’s starring in the recent releases THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST and THE SMURFS, he’s playing himself in the movies A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS and THE MUPPETS - and he and husband David Burtka are proud papas to their year-and-a-half-old twins. To put it mildly, Harris is in demand.
A native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Harris has done musical theatre and plays on Broadway and in Los Angeles, as well as performing on screens large and small. Even with his crazy schedule, Harris still finds time to cordially chat with reporters during and after a panel for actors working in television comedy, held on the Twentieth Century Fox lot. The other panelists include Lucas Neff from RAISING HOPE, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Ty Burrell from MODERN FAMILY, Matthew Morrison and Chris Colfer from GLEE and Harris’ HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER costar Jason Segel (who also stars in and co-wrote THE MUPPETS).
Harris sees some symmetry in having begun - on the Fox lot, no less - as Doogie, the serious hyper-smart young doctor, and winding up here as Barney. “It’s been a crazy run. Having started on DOOGIE HOWSER, I was used to playing this sort of Everyman center of the show, where wacky people played around me. It’s really been a fun second life to get to be the wacky one.”
Given that so much of the humor in MOTHER comes from Barney’s outrageous actions and attitudes, how much can the character evolve? Or would evolving Barney too much injure the show?
“Well, I’m hoping there’s some evolution,” Harris replies. With everything that’s going on, including Barney’s brief belief that he was about to be a father and the actual expectant parenthood and possible moving away of good friends Marshall (Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan), “I can only expect that he’ll have to go through some sort of journey this season. So I’m assuming evolution would be inevitable.”
Asked about his comedy film actor, Harris reaches back to the silent era, naming Harold Lloyd. HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER is a bit more modern than that, but Harris reveals something that viewers may not know - the show is shot in the style of sitcoms of yore, with multiple cameras. Multi-cam comedy conventionally means there’s a live audience, but this isn’t the case here. Harris explains. “We do one [episode] a week. We shoot it like it’s a multi-camera show with an audience, just with no audience. So we film Wednesday, Thursday, Friday all day, and if you are in the scenes, you get to be there. If not, you get to have the afternoon off.”
Harris muses on what this means for him as a performer. “It’s a weird style of acting. I’m kind of envious of the other panelists, because there’s something about the comedy with the one camera that allows a little more subtlety and close-ups and tracking shots. We do film ours like it’s a big multi-camera show, and yet there’s no audience. You have to do this quasi-heightened reality as if there are people laughing audibly at your jokes. It changes the tempo of what it is we do. It’s a unique sort of weird hybrid style. We have great trust in our editor, Sue [Federman]. So we do lots of options to give to her. So if [a joke] doesn’t seem like it’s landing, we trust that she will be the best judge of that and will either truncate it or edit it in such a way that it flies by or doesn’t exist.”
The actors on HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER are allowed to make suggestions regarding their characters - to an extent. “We do a little bit,” Harris relates, “but we sort of have to get permission from whatever writer or producer is there [at the table reading and/or on set] with us. We sort of pitch an idea. They usually appease us because there’s no audience, so they can always just do it and then edit it out.”
On HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, fatherhood often figures into the story, not only in the obvious way via the title, but in how the characters deal with their own fathers. Harris’ Barney has met his, but both the actor says he was affected by the onscreen death of friend Marshall’s dad. “The father was played by Bill Fagerbaake, who was hilarious and perfectly captured the Jason Segel vibe, so that was a loss for us as actors.”
There was a lot of discussion among the characters about Barney’s missing father. When Barney tracked him down, he turned out to be played by John Lithgow. In retrospect, this seems like the clear choice - not only is it well-known that Lithgow can do literally anything, but he and Harris share the same coloring - but finding someone to play Barney’s father was not an easy task. “It’s tricky,” Harris notes. “You want someone that’s talented enough to be able to do great fun scenes with, whether they be dramatic-heartfelt or really crazy-wacky, because Barney is kind of all over the place, but you also want someone that’s recognizable enough. There was so much buildup to ‘Who’s Barney’s father, who’s Barney’s father, who’s Barney’s father?’ that you want it to be someone interesting. So you’ve got to find the blend between then two. And then you have to hope that the actors that you like want to come and join the show for a few weeks.”
And how is it that Harris has become royalty among awards shows presenters? “I was always a fan of awards shows,” Harris replies. “I would watch them all and it’s just a unique skill set to read the teleprompter like you’re talking to someone at home and also be able to be fluid enough to fill if you have to or comment if you have to - and it also gives me something to do when I lose,” he adds with a laugh.
In the 2010 Emmys, Harris not only hosted but co-produced. It was the year of the first Emmy for New Media, which was won by DOCTOR HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG. To explain the category, Harris appeared as Doctor Horrible, who was nefariously planning to replace regular televisions altogether with tiny little computer screens. Did Harris write the sketch? “That was Joss,” he reveals. I’m a huge DOCTOR HORRIBLE fan. I thought the timing of all of that was pretty extraordinary and so when I was able to help produce the Emmy show, I thought that would be a great thing to be able to bring back for the fans and for us in a way that was concise and still clever, and so [the other Emmy producers] said, ‘Cool.’”
TV shows are becoming more open to doing musical numbers. In addition to shows like GLEE - Harris did a guest-star turn there in an episode directed by Whedon - and the upcoming SMASH, where the singing segments are built into the premise, series like FRINGE, GREY’S ANATOMY and, yes, HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER have all had installments where characters burst into song. “I think it’s great that we’re in a TV age where people are so accepting of music in all these shows,” Harris opines. “The days of COP ROCK are gone. Before, music [as a production number] would be on a show and it just seemed so jarring, but now HOW IT MET YOUR MOTHER can do a big, giant musical episode and it’s just another episode. The same, I think, with GLEE. Everyone owes a lot to GLEE in that sense.”
Speaking of GLEE, would Harris like to do another guest star gig on that show? “I would love to. I had such a great time, three of the most exciting work days of my life.”
Does Harris ever look back at his older work, say, DOOGIE HOWSER, MD, which is still airing in reruns on Hub? “They’re airing it with some really cool things back to back, like old HAPPY DAYS episodes,” Harris says. My TiVo has inadvertently recorded a couple episodes. David, my better half, had never watched it, ever. So every once in a while, we’ll put one on - just for education,” he quips. “It cracks him up and it’s the strangest scrapbook experience ever.”
DOOGIE - to say nothing of the more adult HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER - is off-limits to the Harris-Burtka children at present. “They don’t get to watch TV until they’re much, much older,” Harris says.”
Has the success of HOW IT MET YOUR MOTHER affected the way the show is done and the way the actors approach it over its multiple seasons? “We’re remarkably lucky on HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER,” Harris replies, “just because the structure of the show allows for some shifting of schedules, and thankfully our bosses are cool enough to let us do other things. If someone needs to run to New York and film a talk-show-y thing, they can sort the schedule.” He gives the example of Segel starring in THE MUPPETS at the same time HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER was in production. “Which is a ridiculous schedule, working seven days a week every day on something, so they have been really nice. They haven’t held us to, ‘You must only work on our show, and this is the schedule. Deal with it.’
“I think one of the benefits of longevity is that the cast and the writing staff and the crew all get to know each other better,” Harris adds, “Our show really kind of likes to yin and yang with a serious episode and then a funny one. Keep in mind, HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER is sort of random stories through the head space of an adult recounting things to his kids. So there’s a lot of hyperbole and it’s not quite so linear. The first and second seasons of shows, they’re still trying to determine who says what best and how things can flow the best. When you move past that, then they want to have episodes that are more like what you are like as a person. So the more you get to know each other, the more they can write towards surprise ways of behaviors, dramatic stuff or musical stuff, that wouldn’t normally be expected.”
By Abbie Bernstein
Entertainment Reporter: BuzzyMag.com
