Why Neil Patrick Harris's kids are banned from watching 'How I Met Your Mother' — for now
Neil Patrick Harris’s kids have never even met Barney Stinson. And they don’t know much about Harris’s time in the medical profession, either.
“They’ve watched a couple episodes of [Doogie Howser, M.D.] but not in earnest,” Harris tells Yahoo Entertainment. “And I think my husband told them that How I Met Your Mother was not appropriate for them to watch, maybe because Barney is always such a cad.”
And, as anyone who watched the long-running sitcom knows, that’s definitely a good way to describe the scheming womanizer Harris played for nine seasons, ending in 2014. (Harris won four Emmy nods for his performance.) Still, the actor himself thinks Harper and Gideon, the 10-year-old twins he shares with husband David Burtka, might be ready to see that show.
“I think I may go back on that and let them watch,” he says. “It was a mainstream situation comedy, so I think that it’s OK to watch that.”
Harris notes that his little ones did watch all three seasons of A Series of Unfortunate Events, the Netflix adaptation of children’s books by Daniel Handler (under the pen name of Lemony Snicket) that concluded in 2019. He expects to watch some of Doogie, the ‘90s dramedy about a teenager and working physician, with them soon. Harris was just a teen himself, having done just a handful of projects, when he starred in it.
However, the show will soon be back without him, this time starring a girl (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) as a young doctor working while navigating teenage life in Hawaii.
“I’m not currently involved with the revival of the series, but I’m excited to hear that they’re giving it some new life and look forward to catching some episodes with my kids.”
He has several other projects in the works, though, including movies with another ‘90s star, Keanu Reeves. The Matrix 4, which Harris says he’s not allowed to say much about, is scheduled to be released in December.
“I’d never even met [Keanu]. I’d been a fan from afar, and it was exciting meeting such an iconic kind of movie star, with quotation marks around it,” Harris says. “He’s a very lovely, personable, intellectual guy, and any chance I got to spend with him, I absolutely enjoyed. True professional.”
Another one is a partnership with Paypal and Venmo to let shoppers know that they can now check out touch-free using QR codes through the service at more than 8,200 CVS stores nationwide.
“I think it’s good to remind people to shop safely in every way possible,” says Harris, whose family had COVID-19 last spring.
In September, when Harris first spoke about their bout with the illness, he described his symptoms as flu-like. He only realized it was something different when he lost his sense of taste and smell.
“We’re all healthy now,” Harris says now. “Anxious for a vaccine but certainly waiting my turn. I look forward to getting it when I’m able to.”
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