‘How I Met Your Father’ EP on Bringing in ‘One of the Funniest People’ for Latest Cameo
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for How I Met Your Father Season 2 Episode 6, “Universal Therapy.”]
All rise for the latest How I Met Your Father cameo!
In “Universal Therapy,” after Charlie (Tom Ainsley) gets the bar stuck with 10 cases of flavored rosé when a sales rep swindles him, he and Sid (Suraj Sharma) need a way to get rid of it. Ellen (Tien Tran) suggests they just add a celeb’s name to it, and everyone will slurp it up (like they did with Stanley Tucci’s Tucci’s Tortellini and Christina Ricci’s three-cheese ravioli). Charlie suggests Mint Romney, but Ellen says, “it needs to be someone people have welcomed into their homes, day after day, year after year. Someone trustworthy but feisty. Tough, but fair.” Sid and Charlie both immediately land on Judge Judy and Judy Juice.
And it works! They’re selling it … until Judy Sheindlin herself walks into the bar. “Your honor,” Sid greets her. “To what do we owe the pleasure?” Charlie asks. “Pleasure? I don’t see much pleasure here,” she says. “I was home enjoying a rare day off, just relaxing, heard a bing on my phone, looked down, Instagram, and there I was, selling wine. Judy Juice. I said to myself, you know, I don’t remember making wine, so I’m going to ask you one time: What the hell’s going on around here?”
It turns out Charlie tagged her official account so it would “look legit.” She demands they pour her a glass, and after she tries it, she declares it “awful,” wondering, “what are all these people doing drinking this swill?” Sid explains, “See, Your Honor, they don’t care what it tastes likes. They are totally blinded by their Judy love.” And so Sheindlin takes the cases of wine and sells them herself. “That’s when it hit me,” she says in her video online. “People like wine. People like me. Put those hands together, and you got Judy Juice.” Charlie calls her a “firecracker” and gets a look from Sid when he admits, “there was a moment where I really thought the three of us were going to become an inseparable trio.”
Adam Rose/Hulu
So how did that cameo come about? “It was so fun. We came up with that story, and we knew we wanted to sort of skewer the sort of culture we’re in where it seems like every celebrity in the world has a wine, no matter how tangentially related it is to their career and their fame,” executive producer Isaac Aptaker tells TV Insider.
“Judy’s actually my uncle by marriage’s sister. I grew up with her, but I’ve never worked with her professionally, and I think she’s just one of the funniest people. Just by being herself, she’s so funny,” he explains. “I just called her up, and I was like, ‘Hey Judy, it’s been a minute. Would you ever want to come by and do a sitcom as yourself for a couple of scenes?’ And she was like, ‘send me the pages.’ Then she read them, and she called me back and totally flat, she goes, ‘it’s hilarious, I’ll do it.’ And I was like, ‘OK, great.'”
Sheindlin filmed her scenes on a break from working on her new Amazon show, Aptaker shares. “She came by and knocked out the scenes, and the guys were so scared,” he recalls. “She’s the loveliest person, but you see her on TV, she’s no-nonsense. So Tom and Suraj were like, ‘oh my God, we’re doing a scene with Judge Judy,’ and you could feel it in the air that day. But she had the best time, did three takes, nailed it, and then went back to keep on filming her court show.”
How I Met Your Father, Tuesdays, Hulu
