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How I Met Your Mother - Josh Radnor talks Ted/Robin Deleted Scene and more in Interview

Apr 1, 2014

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Since the show was all about meeting the mother, what was it like to finally film that scene where you tap her and say hello and get under the umbrella?
That was actually Cristin [Milioti, who played the Mother]'s audition scene and they didn't really change a word from when we first read it together. It was also the last scene we filmed on the very last day of filming, so emotions were running high on both fictional and nonfictional tracks. All the writers, cast, network and studio execs — everyone who worked on the show in any capacity was there watching. There was a big delay while we waited for them to get the rain right, so everyone had a chance to really take in the moment.

I always found working with Cristin to be such a joy, so when it came time to shoot it, I just tried to will myself into the character's shoes and connect with Cristin and not think of it as this huge, iconic moment. I mean, Ted may be nervous approaching her but he doesn't know it's, like, the biggest moment of his life. So we did the scene a bunch of times and it felt good and real and effortless and then people made a few speeches and we all went to MacLaren's for a final drink.

How long did you know how it would end?
They had mentioned to me the twist about the mother in the first season, and I kind of put it out of my head. I didn’t know if they would actually want to come back to it and do that, especially after Cristin, because she was so wonderful and the fans seemed to really take to her. So I asked them “Are you guys still doing that?” And they said yeah.

Were you aware that people had essentially called exactly what happened?

Yeah, but I think that was intentional. It’s not that people cracked some code. They were laying that in, so that it would be discussed and slightly less jarring for people.

It wasn’t this big surprise ending. They wanted it to feel justified.

Yeah, I think so. It was going to be shocking no matter what and they wanted to soften it a little bit or at least get people talking about it. There were a couple of hints along the way: Ted’s big speech to the mother in "The Time Travelers." That was the first time I heard people talking about that possibility.

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You’ve lived in this character for so many years, do you think he thought about Robin when he was with “The Mother”?
They cut a scene that Cobie [Smulders] and I shot between Ted and Robin. I thought it was a really important scene and I talked to Carter and Craig [Bays and Thomas, HIMYM's co-creators and co-showrunners] about it. I understand why they cut it, but I thought it laid in that Robin had been thinking about Ted all these years more than Ted had been thinking about Robin. But who knows?

It’s weird to speculate on something that isn’t actually real. [Laughs.] It’s an imagined story, but you also have to wonder what happened in the six years after she died and what was that like for Ted. Obviously, he’s been mulling over his past and sifting through things. And there was that comment about Robin always coming over for dinner, so they’ve clearly reestablished a contact and a deep friendship.

Can you tell me a little bit more about what happened in the cut scene?
It was a scene after they ran into each other on the street. They had lunch the next day. I don’t want to go too much into it because they obviously cut it for a reason, but I thought it was a really sweet and sad and funny scene. It also talked about Robin having a run-in with a bull in Spain. They’re so densely packed, these episodes, and they’re always long. We shot more than could be in the episode, which we always do, so some stuff has to go.

60 comments:

  1. This is a perfectly good example of how you should NOT stick to an idea for longer than necessary. It might have been a good twist back in season 1, it turned out as the crappiest possible ending in season 9.

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  2. Great interview!
    Just reinforces everything I felt about the show - before and after the finale!

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  3. I'm like "oh, bite me!". Sadly, my anger hasn't gone anywhere

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  4. Sorry you and many others hated it, but I honestly could not imagine a better, more fitting finale to the series! It was everything the nine years had been hinting at.


    Honestly one of my top 5 finales ever.

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  5. Well, of course, it is a matter of opinion on many levels, but purely from the character development point of view, I truly think it was a disaster. Someone has yet to give me a good reason for S9 ever existing (and Barney's wedding specially) if this is what they had in mind for the finale.
    Was it shocking? Hell yeah. Did not see it coming at all. But that does not make it good. I was absolutely sure about what would happen in BrBa, for example, and it was still amazing.

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  6. I think you and I are alone in the corner with that view haha. I watched it again today and while I'm a little annoyed that we spent all of season 9 at the wedding, I'm quite fine with how it ended. We have more than one true love, we don't have just one soul mate. Unfortunately it's quite real that people die and then their loved ones move on. It doesn't mean that Robin was a consolation prize, it's just how life goes. We find love and happiness where we can and when we can.

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  7. From a character development standpoint it was spot on and the last few seasons existed (not just 9) because CBS really likes throwing money around.

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  8. Honestly, if that's what they've been building up to all this time... Most people (I would say between 60% and 70%) are angry, because the ending didn't fit the plot before. You can make an ending like that work if you would've avoided certain things, but to most of the viewers it feels like they did everything they possibly could in the years between shooting that "ending" with the kids actors and actually airing it to NOT make it work at all. If everyone except a selected few are happy than that's just bad storytelling. And bad storytelling is bad so the outrage is justified, that's all that is to it.

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  9. If butthurt shippers want to ignore well established character history, numerous clues, and copious amounts of foreshadowing because they didn't get the fairytale ending they wanted that's up to them. It was a damn good ending and the best possible one for a show that was past its prime.


    If I was EP Craig Thomas, I'd take a hiatus from social media for a while after posting a vine video on Twitter of Ted Mosby saying "Just be cool lady, damn!" from last night's finale.

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  10. I am not a shipper and I hated that ending. I just feel cheated by it.

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  11. We differ there, obviously. I think everything that happened made a ton of sense.

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  12. I feel like they got married so Robin would realize that they're just not right for each other and also to come to a realization that it was Ted all along. But then again it's just my opinion and only creators know the reason behind it :)
    Also Barney is just not the "get married" kind of guy, and that's absolutely ok, not everyone is. (marriage to Robin made him realize this) He has his daughter and that's all he needs.

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  13. Honestly I think every single character arc ended exactly as it should have. Each was true to the character and their evolution throughout the series.

    As f for why Season 9 was all at Barney and Robin's wedding...
    The answer is very simple, but some people are not satisfied by it.

    The extending of the series to 9 seasons was not about story or needed content, it was about CBS (and maybe C&C) wanting another season.

    The reason it took place at the B/R wedding was simply a stylistic choice. They thought there was enough possibilities for situational comedy before and at a wedding.They wanted to use that one situation to flash backwards and to flash forward off as a constant.

    It was NEVER about Barney and Robin belonging together... In fact, there was as many or more signs they should have never been together in the first place.



    The wedding was just the place Ted met the mother of his children.

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  14. So Robin regretted marrying Barney and not ending up with Ted all those years. Makes sense considering she basically left the gang over Ted/Tracy, the look of joy on her face in the last scene with the blue horn solidified that.

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  15. I don't think she regretted marrying Barney. I think she regretted that it didn't work.

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  16. I would have been okay if they used some other location for the season, or just used their traditional format of not having one constant location.


    That said, I found so much of the wedding based humor and stories at and around the wedding hilarious!

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  17. I'm no shipper, but if we would go on a rewatch and count the number of signs of what pairing isn't meant to be, I'm pretty sure Ted and Robin would win with at least double the amount of signs, that's why most people are pissed with the ending.

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  18. I bet the deleted scene reveals Robin rejected Ted and said she didn't love him not because she didn't, but because she couldn't have kids and did not want Ted to resent a life without children.

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  19. I think she did, she didn't even want to marry him until Ted intervened. At the farewell apartment party she even said that Ted was the one she should have ended up with.

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  20. 1st example - that's just cold feet
    2nd example - that was well after the divorce when people love to reevaluate things and Robin's speech had a very distinct 'probably' in there so she wasn't sure either.


    Robin loved Barney and vice-versa. Unfortunately, they found out that's not always enough after they got married and not before.

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  21. I honestly do not see another way it could have ended that was as true to the characters. Not one.


    - Sure they could have ended it with Ted and Tracy together, but Ted would never have been telling these stories in the first place had Tracy not died.


    - They could have spent more time devoted to Barney and Robin's divorce, but the show made it clear they would never work AND the show was never about their marriage in the first place!


    - They could have left off without him going back to Robin, but despite many not liking it.... Ted always went back to Robin every time before. Did they expect him not to this time? If so how and why? XD


    It was designed to end with them together from the very pilot. Period.


    From the people I encountered at work this morning, and the people I have talked to offline about the series - NOT NEARLY as many people hated as the well-put "Butthurt shippers" tend to think hated it.


    It is not even close to a "select few" that understood what the entire series was about or are happy with the ending. The haters just tend to be the most vocal and feel the need to rage about the series not ending the way they wanted.

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  22. Barney was the one with cold feet, with Robin It was more than cold feet, it was every sign in the universe telling her to not go through with Barney including her own Mother.



    Considering the look on her face when she saw Ted and Tracy together, followed by her rushing out of the party and the gang, I'd says he was sure. The deleted scene showing that Robin had been thinking about Ted all this time he was with Tracy, cements the fact that she regretted not going all in with Ted earlier.

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  23. It all worked out in a way, Robin got to experience the career she wanted but couldn't have if she was to start a family, Ted got the children he couldn't have with Robin, and in the end fate brought them together.

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  24. Didn't that happen when the broke up in season 5?

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  25. Best ending loved the series final couldn't ask for a better end.

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  26. Yes, you are right... 30 year old Ted and Robin did not belong together even though they loved each other. But 30 year old Ted and Robin did not get together in the end... 50 year old Ted and Robin did!


    That 20 years changed them and allowed them both realize they always wanted to be together. Now at 50 they both had the understanding, maturity and wisdom to be together.


    As for Barney and Robin...
    I never said that there was more proof for against them compared to Ted and Robin. I said there was more showing that Barney and Robin would not work. And... not long after their wedding they realized that very fact and went their separate ways.

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  27. Exactly.
    At 30 Ted and Robin wanted different things and were not compatible, but after experiencing everything they always wanted, they realized at this point in their lives they want to be together and were now at a compatible point.


    Timing? Fate? Both?

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  28. Oh don't get me wrong I think they were not supposed to be together at all, I just don't see it.
    But objectively if you break up with your bf and stay good friends with him and hang out with him all the time you're bound to wonder what if and yeah even give it another chance (but that could be just me lol).

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  29. Ha! XD
    It's not just you, JustMe! XD


    I think many people do that. Also I think many people have a person they consider "The one that got away" that they would gladly want to be with again.


    Love is not always logical, if anything it makes people do illogical things! XD

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  30. I'd rather have watched that scene 10 times over the real finale.

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  31. "The haters just tend to be the most vocal and feel the need to rage about the series not ending the way they wanted."

    I'd have to agree. The aftermath of this finale is also the biggest argument against fan input, fan entitlement, and social media's effect on TV to date. TV isn't a 'choose your own adventure' book and the story being told is that of its creator. Additionally, anyone who genuinely feels blindsided by the events of the finale just weren't paying enough attention.

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  32. So,so true!


    This social media generation seems to feel entitled to have shows do what they want and end how they want.


    I think that is one of the most negative side effects resulting from Social media - Many people think that their opinion actually matters! XD

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  33. Two things to make a relationship work. Timing and chemistry. They always had the latter, the former just wasn't right.

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  34. But that's the problem: a story is a chain. Once you place a part of it, the others that follow have to fit with that new piece. Which means that if you add something, you MUST take that into consideration when you think about the next part. So I don't exactly care WHY they added a ninth season, or why they chose to place it in Barney and Robin's wedding, the fact is they did. And by doing so they changed the story. When they go back and try to ignore the new piece and make sense of the whole disregarding the last part, they screw it up.


    So, yeah, it might have been simply cause they wanted more money, or because CBS was a pain, or because the sky is blue. It doesn't matter. The fact remains: it did not make sense. The choice was not irrelevant, it changed the story and consequently the end they had in made became stupid.

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  35. I completely agree this ending may have worked earlier in the series, but it totally failed present day on screen. This show evolved and the characters' dynamics changed, which is something Bays and Thomas should've taken in account. They wrote themselves in a corner and if they had not done that, the finale could have and should have been so much more. If the intent all along was for Ted and Robin to be together, then why did their relationship never work during the entire series? I think the answer was they were people who have always wanted different things out of a relationship and even life. That never really changed even as the years passed.

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  36. Barney is a father, its gonna be legen, wait for it, dad, legendad

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  37. I hated this finale, if they wanted this from the beginning then they surely knew how to get people watching and it wasn't because of a couple it was because it was a show the was about a family who are friends and don't split up. Really terrible way to end a show that pointed to another sign.

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  38. I liked the idea of the ending but the way they did it didn't really work. It was all compact into the end of the last episode making it very rushed and the Ted and Robin thing whilst good needed more development between them(which may sound stupid as there's always been those two but it didn't work so much)

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  39. And one more thing: What happened toTed wearing his wedding ring in 2015 and 2017 in previous episodes flashforward?

    And why would they wait five years to get married and not prepone their wedding after learning that The Mother is pregnant?

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  40. I am completely with you on the viewer entitlement front. I have watched too many shows pander to shippers and end up worse for it.

    I appreciate that the showrunners had a vision and carried it out. That being said, I would add a second takeaway here in addition to your remarks: Showrunners should know how many seasons it will take to cohesively execute their story and stick to that timeline.

    I only say that because I think a lot of what we got in the last few years was padding. So, by the time the vision was carried out, it wasn't as resonant as it might have been. I'm just baffled that so many folks at this point still care enough to rage like this. Really?

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  41. "Showrunners should know how many seasons it will take to cohesively execute their story and stick to that timeline."

    I agree with this too. As far as I'm concerned, HIMYM should have ended three seasons ago but CBS kept throwing piles of money at them and they took it.

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  42. I simply cannot agree that the wedding made the entire series different. It changed nothing for me personally and that was not the point of it being set there in any way.

    In fact, as a counter argument...
    To me seeing so much of the lead-up to the wedding made it clear to me that Barney and Robin were NOT meant to be together.... One could easily take the entire season was there to show Barney and Robin did not belong together.

    Regardless of how each viewer interprets the "why" of the wedding season, Barney and Robin's wedding was MOST important because it is where Ted met Tracy. Also, it was basically the last time the group was really together as a group. They made it clear that they started to shift apart after the wedding. So having the last season centered on the last period of time everyone was together makes PERFECT sense to the story.

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  43. But it's not even about Robin and Barney. At least not JUST about that. They made a nine-season series around the idea of "How I Met Your Mother", a guy telling his kids how he met their mom. Cool. And then they not only kill the mother, they also say the reason why the guy is telling the story is so his kids will give their blessing for him to ask a woman out.
    Seriously? In what universe does this constitute and ok ending? Barney and Robin being together was, honestly, the least of their problems...

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  44. We looked at the show in COMPLETELY different ways.

    Ted telling those stories was the entire point of the series - NOT getting the okay (that he never needed in the first place) from his kids to go date Aunt Robin again.

    That last story, when the kids gave Ted their permission was the moment Ted realized what the kids knew all along, Ted always loved Robin and wanted to be with her. Of course they were okay with it. It had been 6 years since their mom died and they want their dad to be happy.

    The show was never actually about meeting the mother. Meeting the mother was a vehicle to tell stories about Ted and his friends.

    A few years ago I said that I was fine with not meeting the mother until the final scene in the final episode and I never had to learn her name. That was how little the series was about the mother to me.

    Even the writers and actors have said the show was not about meeting the mom. I'm done on this topic since some people just refuse to acknowledge that they saw the series differently than it was intended... or as than the series was written in my eyes.

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  45. I rewatched the finale and still love it. I think my main point of contention was seeing so little of Robin, and when we did see her seeing her seem so sad. I would have liked to see a few of her adventures while she was traveling to show that she was happy pursuing her career. Overall, I wish they would have just expanded on this finale for at least another two episodes. That being said, I'm even more pleased with how brilliantly they planned for this ending. I managed to watch a few reruns and was incredibly impressed that, knowing what to look for, I saw bread crumbs setting up this finale.


    Could the finale (and season) have been executed better? Yes, absolutely, but that doesn't minimize the message and ending for me. So I very much want to see this deleted scene along with the others they cut. Great interview from Josh.

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  46. Thank you and you are welcome!


    I try to explain without anger or getting annoyed, but the 600 comments about the finale have taken their toll on me I think! XD


    Hopefully you can enjoy it more next time you watch it.... Or at least not hate it so much! XD

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  47. I don't think it was about Robin or Quinn for Barney. He himself asks if he didn't change for Robin, whom else is he going to change for. And the scene with him holding his daughter answered that question so perfectly. That was a great end to Barney's arc IMO.

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  48. I think the point of the marriage was them both realizing they are not for each other.

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  49. Call me number 3. I loved the finale and everything abut it made sense. I'm still in shock about the fact that there are so many people who get invested in a show and then don't get what the whole show is about.

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  50. Sebastian CaulfieldApril 2, 2014 at 2:26 AM

    I loved the finale. It was genuine and honest, and even though it wasn't happy, it stayed true to real life. People get married, and they fail, and they get divorced, and some men knock up strangers, and they also become ill, and some of them actually die, and some people are courageous enough to go for what they've always wanted but never could have, as Ted did at the end.
    All the people hating the ending of the series do so because they cannot face the truth that sometimes life goes differently as expected.

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  51. here, here. Totally agree. Loved it and fell in love with the characters all over again. It was a touching and poignant end. But, I rarely have expectations of how I think it should go and let the storytellers tell their story and glad I can go along for the ride.

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  52. If it helps, I agree completely with everything you said. It seems to me that it is as if people look at things too simplistically and then don't like how a sitcom showed more emotional depth than they themselves possess. I find it very tiresome to have to explain some simple truths of life:
    1) Weddings get planned for more than a year, but subsequent marriages can last even less than that (or the three years). So, we spent entire season 9 on a wedding. So what? There are no guarantees in life, why would there be in a show that purports to depict it.
    2) People die. I wrote more than 18 months ago that the mother would die. And that's OK. I thought that was the motive for Ted to tell his story (didn't see the Robin twist, but I'm glad it happened).
    3) People change. Barney tried to do it with Robin, but it didn't work out. He found the girl in the end, though :). Robin tried to do it with Ted, and it also didn't work out. But obviously, 25 years after they met, everything was just right, and the series showed well how this could happen plausibly.
    But explaining this so someone who considers the finale travesty/slap/betrayal/etc, would take a lot more, and I commend you for your effort.

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  53. Thank you!


    Absolutely agree that most of the people have that "one that got away" but that's just part of life.
    Oh yeah love most certainly makes you do some crazy stuff lol.

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  54. 'Of course they were okay with it.'

    I had such a visceral, angry reaction to that sentence that it frightened me. I don't expect you to understand or to even want to understand why I felt that way, but I can I ask - do you really feel that grief...what? Softens? Dispenses over a certain amount of time? Because I don't believe it does. It changes and melts into you so that you can never look at something with the same perspective quite again. Funnily enough, I expect, that while it's not quite on the same level, this sort of 'grief' is what some of the people here are experiencing against the finale.

    I really thought long and hard about whether to reply. My first reaction would have been illogical and perhaps hurtful. I wanted to avoid that because you may well have suffered some sort of parental loss in your life and perhaps a certain amount of time passed for you and you decided you were okay with it. That's a little sad, but if that's the case, I guess I should be happy for you. I know I never will be. My dad could have waited 'six years' and I still wouldn't have been ready. As it was, at least I was honest about it rather than morphing my reply into a surreal 'I'm estatic about it!'

    I guess this is what I don't get. I feel like the writers are trying to say, 'that's life, bad stuff happens' in regard to the mother dying, but if so then why were they so afraid of writing the kid characters as reacting realistically? I don't mean they don't have to be outright angry or behaving in the way I've
    see certain storylines think kids react to things like this, as little brats who need to be corrected by the main narrative, who need to be punished for daring to express unhappiness. I just found the whole thing puzzling. It was like 'yeah, we want to be grim-dark about this particular subject, because how realistic, let's show our audience that bad stuff happens and we're not afraid to tackle it...oh but whoops we can't have the kids react to our ending in anything but happiness because we have to show that this decision is the right one and if they don't some people might feel alienated from Ted.' It was just so mind-boggling they they thought killing a mother off was realistic, but not having her kids be anything but happy afterwards regarding a change in the status quoi, in their very lives was not.

    Sadly though I think your description of the mother being a 'vehicle' was exactly the way the writers saw this character. And that speaks volumes to me about what those particular people think about grief.

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  55. Completely respect you opinion, even if I feel very differently. We are experience loss and grief differently.


    I do not think there is only one right person for everyone so the act of moving on to me just seems natural I guess.


    I have not lost a parent to death, but my parents did divorce when I was a teen. When my mom got to the point she ready I wanted to her to start dating though. It was simply not about my feelings and whether or not I was ok with a new beau or not. My feelings should barely (if at all) enter the equation in my mind. It was all about her.


    I have however experienced the loss of people I myself loved. A best friend I grew up with and a woman I dated for years that I was ready to spend the rest of my life with. ...


    Imagining if we married and had kids before I lost her, I would possibly still be mourning..... I do not know honestly. What I do know is that if I was ready to move I would expect others to be happy for me.


    Like I sad, we all react and feel differently on the topic. I could see myself reacting just like the kids did.

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  56. great interview, he seems sincere.

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  57. I personally think that season 9 was primarily about the audience getting to know the Mother better and the dragged out wedding weekend was a casualty of that. I loved the finale and it fit exactly with my perceptions of the characters...most of season 9 (and 8), however, did not, and that messed with too many viewers I think. Although I very much appreciated the ending, they could have executed it better by spreading it out over a few more episodes at the very least.

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