“How I Met Your Mother” co-creator Carter Bays on Neil Patrick Harris: “He’s a wind that we have affixed our sails to.”
At Wednesday’s Hollywood Radio and Television Society luncheon, I did not expect Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner to make such provocative comments about gay actors being out and, in particular, about Neil Patrick Harris’s future career prospects.
So when I chatted with Neil’s boss, How I Met Your Mother co-creator Carter Bays before the start of the event, we discussed different Neil Patrick Harris topics.
Starting with Carter’s thoughts on Neil becoming such a red-hot star over the past few years hosting the Emmys and Tonys, snagging some movie roles and being a popular guest on talk shows.
“He’s such a force of nature,” said Bays. “He’s a wind that we have affixed our sails to – along with the four other string winds of the other actors of this show. It’s really just been a matter of harnessing his energy and his talent. If it weren’t our show, it would have been some other show.”
Neil’s character of Barney Stinson is such a comic gem. I wondered how this confident womanizer who likes to create crazy situations and then sit back and watch it all go down came to be.
“Neil created the character with us,” said Bays (pictured below, left). “The character was a lot different on the page before we had cast him then he brought a lot to it. The whole magic thing, that’s all Neil. There’s a give-and-take where we’ll write a line and he delivers it but he’ll always put his own spin on it and based on that spin, we’ll go back and write the character with that in mind and over the past five years, it’s been a wonderful collaboration.”
I also had to know if Wayne Brady, who was absolutely hilarious as Barney’s gay brother in two episodes during the second season, would be back anytime soon.
“I hope so, I don’t know how we have not revisited with him in all this time.” Bays said. “I love Wayne, he was so much fun. I hope I’m not telling tales out of school but he was a nightmare for the editors because every take is different and every take is hilarious. How do you pick one? He’s such a master improviser who brings so much to everything he does.”
It was during one of Brady’s appearances in the fall of 2006 that Neil publicly acknowledged being a gay man with a written statement. During Wednesday’s panel discussion, Bays described it as “a crazy time … it was definitely unchartered water for us as second year show-runners.”
He said things worked out well because Harris “is such a phenomenal actor, you don’t care. … He’s such a stable, centered guy. … He’s a poster boy for anything he’s involved in.”
Comments
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Dana Kaminski says:
There were quite a few great things said yesterday, and I am glad that I met you there! Remember I told you, during the “eating portion of the luncheon” about how I had had my first guest blogger the day before, on my own site? The topic was about Rupert Everett’s recent admonishon to GAY ACTORS N-O_T to come out, as he had done. That it harms acting careers, he felt. I put it out to my readership to comment what they thought about that statement.
Coincidentally, or karmically, that all came up as a topic more than once during the talk and the interviews.
On a separate note, I have read quite a few different articles on your blog, here, and I love your writing style. I didn’t get your twitter name, but I would love it if we connected on there. Mine is twitter.com/__dana__
Peace and Success to you
Dana