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Jason Segelis opening up about why he was “really unhappy” during the later seasons ofHow I Met Your Mother.
DuringThe Hollywood Reporter’s Comedy Actor Roundtable, theShrinkingstar, 43, discussed feeling a lack of creative freedom despite his success in television and film.
“I then had to grapple with why? What’s off about this equation?” he continued. “I think the thing that I was confronted with is that it’s really great to make the decision of ‘f— it, I do what I want,’ but unfortunately there’s a system of permission in place where people will go, ‘We don’t give a s— [what you want to do].’ Like, ‘Good for you, man.'”
During the final years ofHow I Met Your Mother, Segel, who played Marshall Eriksen on the CBS sitcom, was balancing starring roles in films includingThe Muppets,The Five-Year EngagementandThis Is 40.
During the round table, theSex Tapeactor also opened up about wanting to expand his horizons and try his hand at drama followingHow I Met Your Mother’s series finale in 2014.
Eric McCandless/FOX
“AfterHow I Met Your Motherended, I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. I really wondered if I was actually good enough to do drama,” he recalled. “I took a movie calledThe End of the Tourto play David Foster Wallace. The degree of difficulty of it not looking like aSaturday Night Livesketch, when you get the glasses and the bandanna and you’re saying the lines, felt so high.”
“I also had no system of prep because you prep differently for comedy,” he added. “There was a lot of improv in how we came up, and these were big chunks of dialogue. I literally just played in my head, ‘What wouldEdward Nortondo?’ I got a dialect coach and I did all these things that I heard you do if you’re a real actor. But man, I was scared.”
Despite moving on from his part on the sitcom, Segel shared in January that he would beopen to reprising his roleon the show’s spinoffHow I Met Your Father.
TheWinning Timeactor toldEntertainment Tonightthat he would “do anything” for the Hulu spinoff’s creators, adding, “Those people changed my life, and I would do anything they ever asked me to.”
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source: people.com
