Neil Patrick Harris explains why he and hubby David Burtka were not on “American Horror Story”

Neil Patrick Harris has made no secret lately that he’d like a have some kind of a role in the enormously popular American Horror Story anthology series.

What the newly-named Oscar host had not made known until recently is that he and husband David Burtka had been asked to play a couple during the show’s first season – the roles eventually played by Zachary Quinto and Teddy Sears.

The AHS couple died in an apparent murder/suicide and that’s a big reason why Harris passed on it despite Burtka’s wanting to do it.

The couple had just played fictionalized versions of themselves in the 2011 film A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas.

‘ … In it, he plays sort of my drug dealer and I really am straight and we’ve been pretending like we’re gay, it’s a very sort of meta joke. We have a terrible relationship, and we’re shouting at each other and it’s awful,’ Harris recently told EW Radio on Sirius XM.

‘We had just played ourselves as a couple, not getting along, and I thought, it just seems weird to do that twice, like as individual actors, to play a couple that hates each other twice. It just felt weird.

‘So I said no, that we shouldn’t do it. And David wanted to. I said, “I just don’t want us to be known as acouple that don’t like each other. That seems weird.” And then wouldn’t you know, American Horror Story is a big, gigantic success and super awesome.’

Not that Harris has not had other successes since turning down that series with winning a Tony Award for Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway and landing a supporting role in the current box office hit Gone Girl.

And Burtka clearly accepted Harris’ decision to pass on AHS with grace since the two got married last summer after 10 years together.

Below is one of their scenes from the Harold & Kumar movie. It’s a riot!