With “Barbie” Greta Gerwig is breaking one record after the other. The filmmaker has also found success as an actress – although a How I Met Your Mother spin-off starring her was shelved after just one unreleased episode…
Warner Bros. / CBS
Actress and filmmaker Greta Gerwig has traveled a unique career path in recent years: from indie favorite in films such as the black-and-white tragic comedy “Frances Ha” to director of the record-breaking mega-hit “Barbie”.
Gerwig was also able to celebrate considerable success with her previous directing work – the coming-of-age film “Lady Bird” and the Oscar-winning literary adaptation “Little Women” – and her acting roles (including in “century women”) brought her regular critical praise a. What is less well known, however, is that Gerwig almost became a series star in a spinoff of How I Met Your Mother that was never released! What has happened there!?
This is how the “How I Met Your Mother” sequel with Greta Gerwig should be
A spin-off of the hit sitcom was announced just a few months after the end of the final season of How I Met Your Mother. It should be called “How I Met Your Dad” – and apart from the title and a similar basic constellation, it should stand on its own two feet.
How I Met Your Dad was also supposed to be about a parent telling their children the story of how they met their spouse – but this time from a woman’s perspective and in a different setting. Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, creators of the original series, have teamed up with Saturday Night Live writer Emily Spivey to develop the spinoff, and Greta Gerwig was set to star (while Sleepless in Seattle star Meg Ryan is her future version that should lend voice).
Many of the characters in How I Met Your Dad were modeled after the original characters, except that there was only one main male role. And unlike the hit sitcom that ended in 2014, there were also queer characters on the show in the form of gay couple Danny (Andrew Santino) and Todd (Drew Tarver). Other differences included the fact that protagonist Sally, unlike Ted played by Josh Radnor, isn’t originally looking for love – and that the writers left out an important element of “How I Met Your Mother”…
That’s why “How I Met Your Dad” was immediately scrapped
Last but not least, “How I Met Your Dad” was also intended as a feminist-tinged, more progressive update of the series original – an approach with which Emily Spivey and Greta Gerwig were perhaps a few years ahead of their time. Another reason the spinoff didn’t materialize could be that the father’s identity is revealed in the very first episode – and the lack of a secret would give potential viewers one less reason to stay tuned beyond the pilot .
Although it’s not known what exactly upset the station, CBS has expressed a desire for the pilot to be reworked. But Bays and Thomas firmly refused, and “How I Met Your Dad” was finally buried. Although the makers could have offered the series to other TV stations and streaming services, nobody wanted it despite the big name.
Greta Gerwig’s honest words about the failure of the series
In the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Gerwig also revealed a few details – and quite honestly admitted that the rejection could also be due to the fact that the viewers simply didn’t like their role. “The test audience got a knob that they could turn to the right when they saw something they liked and to the left when they saw something they didn’t like,” said the 40-year-old. “In all my scenes, they turned the knob to the left.”
Finally, in 2022, another spin-off, “How I Met Your Father”, was released, which tied directly to its predecessor and benefited from this connection, without being able to build on the huge success of the original series, which remained popular. In the end, it was perhaps a good thing for Gerwig that nothing came of the project – after all, she had the time to start a directing career that has now culminated in the mega-success of “Barbie”…
Because the producers really wanted to get rid of Charlie Sheen: This superstar was originally supposed to replace him in “Two And A Half Men”!
2023-08-29 19:02:51
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