‘How I Met Your Father’ EPs on Latest ‘HIMYM’ Alum & ‘This Is Us’ Connection
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for How I Met Your Father Season 2 Episode 5, “Ride or Die.”]
Just four episodes after Neil Patrick Harris popped up, another HIMYM alum drops by How I Met Your Father in “Ride or Die” — and this time, we don’t have to wait until the end for the surprise.
The episode opens with Jesse (Chris Lowell) and Meredith (Leighton Meester) on Good Day Live! as their tour is about to begin, and the person interviewing them is none other than Sandy Rivers (Alexis Denisof)! As he ends the segment, he calls them adorable before plugging their sold-out concert. He adds, “you can catch me, Sandy Rivers, on the entertainment beat,” then, as an aside, continues, “demoted because of some unproven accusations, which even if true would be perfectly legal in the states in which the alleged incidents took place.”
“That was one where it felt like sort of towards the end of How I Met Your Mother, they allude to that he has been in some sort of shady, unsavory behavior that has gotten him demoted,” executive producer Isaac Aptaker tells TV Insider. “So we thought it would be a really, really fun way to revisit the character where he’s now been stuck on interviewing a pop star as opposed to breaking world news.”
And bringing Denisof back was easy. “Pam [Fryman, who directed HIMYM and is back for the follow-up series] just has such a great relationship with everyone she used to work with,” the EP continues. “It’s like she fires off a text to anyone she’s ever worked with, and 10 seconds later, they’re like, ‘You’re directing? When do I have to be there?’ I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Cliff Lipson / ©CBS / courtesy Everett Collection
But was it just that one cameo, or could he pop up again? “It’s totally possible. He was so funny, and we’re always open to it. So absolutely,” executive producer Elizabeth Berger says.
There’s a fun This Is Us connection there, Aptaker reveals. “It’s funny because when we filmed, the last season of This Is Us, we used their house. They’ve sold it since, but we used his and [HIMYM alum] Alyson [Hannigan]’s house as where Mandy Moore’s final home is. So we’ve been in this guy’s house like many, many times trying not to destroy things with our huge crew. And then we had him on our set, and we were like, ‘Hey, by the way, just really want to say thank you. Thanks for letting us kick you out for a few weeks last year,'” he shares with a laugh.
While the episode begins with Sandy interviewing Jesse and Meredith, the couple breaks up again by the end of it. (“He never does a quiet breakup,” Aptaker notes. “It’s always sort of a spectacular explosion.”) But don’t worry: Jesse’s been in this position before.
“We’ve seen him get knocked down before. When we met him, he was still reeling from getting knocked down in a really massive way, and I think probably we’ll see it take a beat for him to recover,” according to Berger. “But these people are young, they’re in New York City, they’re used to sort of getting knocked down and dusting themselves off and getting back out there. So I think you can expect some of that from him.”
Well, at least he’s used to it.
How I Met Your Father, Tuesdays, Hulu
