'How I Met Your Mother' creators talk finale reveal, season 9 changes
Credit: CBS
After eight seasons of teases, How I Met Your Mother finally introduced us to The Mother, played by Broadway vet (Once) and 30 Rock alum Cristin Milioti.
“It was a pretty big umbrella to fill,” says series creator Carter Bays, about the challenges of finding an actress to play the titular Mother in the closing moments of last night's season finale. “And yet Cristin is, against all odds, exactly what we were looking for. She made us laugh on 30 Rock, she made us swoon in Once, and her ukulele skills are no joke.”
The reveal was TV's best-kept secret: Milioti’s cameo was filmed on March 27 at the Twentieth Century Fox lot in Los Angeles. All parties involved in the shoot were signed to strict non-disclosure agreements. In addition, the appearance was filmed on a closed set as an added precaution. Bays confirmed, in an interview with TVLine, that viewers will become “much better” acquainted with Milioti’s character during the series' ninth and final season, which will apparently depict "the epic story of the longest wedding weekend ever.”
This apparently plays into the prevailing theory that the entire final season will be a (mostly) real-time depiction of Barney and Robin's wedding weekend, in which the entire season takes place over the course of one 56-hour period. Bays has gone on record saying that the series would adopt a different format in its final season, leading fans to theorize everything from the Mother taking over narrator duties from Future Ted to a season that flashforwards past Barney and Robin's wedding and into Ted and the Mother's courtship. Of the prevalent theories, the "one season, one wedding weekend" theory seems the most likely (though I'd love if Bays found a way to incorporate the "Mother as Narrator" idea into the season as well).
Bays and co-creator Craig Thomas didn't confirm or deny these theories, but they did go into deeper detail about the big reveal in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. "One of our hard and fast rules [when we thought we were doing eight seasons] was that we didn’t want to meet her until the very end. We felt like, now that we’re doing another year, let’s find an interesting new twist," said Bays.
"We’ve talked here and there about letting the audience see the mother before Ted," added Thomas. "Would that be fascinating or let some air out of the balloon? We were scared of it for a long time, but this past season, it came up, and it just fit in so well."
The co-creators also confirmed their reticence to cast a big name in the role, as Thomas explains, "We didn’t want it to be a big famous star because we didn’t want the wider audience to have associations with whatever actress this would be, where it’s like, 'Oh, it’s Anne Hathaway and I think blank of Anne Hathaway….' You’re waiting years to meet this woman, and it’s like, 'Oh, he’s in love with Amy Adams just like the rest of America is.'" Thomas continues, "The whole idea is that Ted’s never seen this woman before, so it better feel that way to the audience.”
Bays added, "I don’t think [casting a huge star] ever occurred to us. Honestly, exhibit A for us in the discussions was Cobie Smulders. In the pilot of our show, Ted sees [Cobie Smulders'] Robin for the first time and — without naming names — the part of Robin was offered to a pretty famous actress and she turned it down and then we ended up going with Cobie, who was our first choice from the beginning. Thank God we did, for a million reasons, but among those is the fact that when Ted’s seeing her for the first time, America’s seeing her for the first time — the intriguingness of that propelled the show going forward and kept the show alive."
Via: TVLine / Entertainment Weekly
What did you think of last night's big reveal? Sound off in the comments!
