How I Met Your Mother ended it’s nine season run in 2014, leaving fans fairly divided about it’s ending and its — spoiler alert — unceremonious killing off of the titular mother.
It’s taken some time to process that finale (or perhaps block it entirely), and now we have a whole new set of information to take in, with the news that Jason “I like Apple Pie a little too much” Biggs was almost Ted Mosby in the hit series.
Just let that sink in.
First of all — woah. How strange would it have been to see Biggs and Alyson Hannagan, who played Lily Aldrin, be reunited on screen post-American Pie? Would us ’90s kids, who grew up on a steady diet of those movies and their accompanying punk-pop soundtracks, be able to get our heads around seeing them as best mates and not the world’s most awkward couple?
According to Biggs, who dropped this bombshell revelation during an episode of SiriusXM’s The Covino & Rich Show, Hannagan never even knew that her onscreen husband had been offered the role of lovelorn architect Ted, before Josh Radnor took on the gig.
“We’ve never really talked about it. I don’t know that she knows, actually,” Biggs said.
Perhaps even stranger than the idea that Hannagan and Biggs could have shared a screen once more, is the idea that an actor could be so foolish as to turn down the chance to be part of one of the most successful sitcoms of the last twenty years.
It’s almost as hard to comprehend as Craig Bierko turning down the role of Chandler on Friends but, shockingly, that happened too!
Of course, no one ever could have anticipated just how impactful the series was going to be, and Biggs went on to say that turning it down wasn’t one of his better decisions.
“I was offered the role and it’s probably my biggest regret, you know, on passing. I think I was in a phase of, at the time – it sounds so, so obnoxious to say right now – but at the time it was like, ‘OK, do I want to do TV?’ I don’t know that I was quite ready to go that route. I passed on it and then, you know, two things happened very soon thereafter. One, that show blew up. We all know what happened with that show. And two, I was like, ‘I want to do TV!’”
Biggs, who went on to appear in Netflix’s Orange is the New Black, acknowledged that he was grateful for his career but, given his time again things might have gone another way.
“I’m very lucky, very fortunate. I’m still here. That’s number one. Great,” he said. “But yeah, if I had to pick out something I wish I had done differently, I would’ve taken that gig for sure.”
At least the actor, who has recently been trying his hand at television presenting with a gig on US game show Cherries Wild, can console himself with the fact that he is not the only one to have turned down a part on the wildly successful series.
Because everyone in Hollywood is apparently bonkers, Jennifer Love Hewitt was offered the role of Robin Scherbatsky but declined it so that she could star in Ghost Whisperer instead. Canadian actress Cobie Smulders subsequently took the job. Additionally, Felicity and Scandal star Scott Foley was also offered the part of Ted, likewise choosing to turn it down.