Neil Patrick Harris on the process of preparing to play a trans punk rocker in “Hedwig and Angry Inch”

When Neil Patrick Harris begins previews on Broadway in the musical Hedwig and Angry Inch on March 29, he wants to be believable as a transsexual punk rock girl from East Berlin.

It is taking some hard work.

‘I’ve deemed it very important to make sure that I don’t seem uncomfortable in Hedwig’s skin and it’s a skin that’s very unknown to me,’ Harris said over the weekend after being feted at Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Man of the Year.

‘There’s a period of time when it is incredibly awkward and I can’t let that be conveyed when people are paying good money to see me as someone that doesn’t have that (awkwardness),’ he said. ‘It’s been a markedly uncomfortable last couple of months.’

The actor said he has been spending hours ‘stomping around in custom heels and fishnets and a bra full of tomatoes and a wig … and kind of loving it … a hot mess of a wig given to me by drag queen Willam from RuPaul’s Drag Race.’

Harris is wrapping up 10 seasons on the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother and transitioning right back to Broadway where he previously starred in Cabaret, Assassins and Proof.

He admits that this is his biggest challenge on stage to date as he choreographs how to hold a hip and how to keep angles.

‘Girls have a lot more angles than guys,’ he said. ‘Guys have it pretty easy – they just get to stand still and straight and square and girls have to cock a shoulder, cock a hip, show some ass. Everything’s rounded a little softer.’

‘As a guy, that’s a tricky thing to wrap my head around.’

But his rehearsal for Hedwig made the antics he had to endure at Harvard fairly easy as he was forced to dress up in a wig, lingerie and red high-heels to accept his award.

‘I felt … comfortable in the wig and heels,’ he said after. ‘I think normally the Man of the Year is supposed to be a little more uncomfortable than I was.’