In 208 episodes over nine years, he played the pretentious, hopelessly romantic, red-cowboy-boot-sporting architect Ted Mosby. Yet, for someone who has filled such big boots, Josh Radnor remains a strange enigma. Having spent such a large portion of time acting in what was arguably the most popular sitcom on TV, he is surprisingly self-effacing, and genuinely very nice. Among other things – one being Radnor’s identification of me as the journalist who he thought was the “gossip (Tab) writer” – we discussed last year’s famously polarising ending of the show, the level of improvisation involved (you may re-watch the 191st episode with new eyes), and some interesting fashion choices: if you think nothing is worse than those red cowboy boots, you may just be wrong.

On that ending

“The ending was actually cut for commercial reasons by about seven to ten minutes. In the longer version the viewers had more time to digest what was going on. The kids had six years to deal with the mom’s death; the viewers had two minutes. People got a little whiplash from it. But I think it will age well.” At the Union, when a member of the audience risked asking whether Ted had loved Robin all along, Radnor responded with a loud “It’s not real, okay!”, which met with a large round of applause. For an actor who used to defend the plot-twist ending with a “thesis” on why it was good (even joking that the audience should “tell [him] one by one what [they] thought”), this blunt response must have been a great release.

That being said, his thesis was pretty good, too: “It looked like everyone loved it or everyone hated it, when really it was just two girls in Iowa or something… In reality there’s no way to end a beloved show because people are going to be sad no matter what. If Ted and Tracey had just walked off into the sunset people would have called it a soft ending or a cop out. If you look at the series, the whole DNA of the show is in the pilot: it is at once all about the mom, and all about Robin. It is very interesting in that way.” 

Something you would be surprised to know

Radnor claimed that just before they started shooting each post-coital scene between Ted and Robin, Cobie Smulders (Robin) used to whisper to him what they had hypothetically just done. A flustered Radnor would then have to stop filming to wait until he was less red in the face.

Similarities between Radnor and Ted

Radnor joked that not only are they “both from Ohio” and “both attended Liberal Arts Colleges”, but their biggest similarity is that they “look a lot alike”.

Advice for university students

He loved university, saying that being at the Union gave him real “college nostalgia”: “I just want to curl up and read a book!” Aside from a selective amnesia approach towards the life of the daily Cambridge student, he did have some serious advice that he spoke passionately about. “Live in the present”; though it may sound an obvious mantra, he was adamant that we are all too keen to plan further ahead, and that we need to slow down. “University is a special time. It’s hard to know that though. It is hard to contextualise when you’re living it.”

Improvisation

“We were always four or five minutes over. They never just rolled the cameras and said, 'Go crazy guys'.” That being said, Radnor did let slip that in the 191st episode, he suggested that Ted, after confidently posting a letter, should say “Mailed it”, and the line actually made in into the episode. “I don’t even know if I should be proud of that.”

On Fashion

“I have to say, I never understood those red cowboy boots! I thought: 'Why does he think these look good?' He has an okay sense of style!” (We’ll agree to disagree on that one.) He even remembered some of his real-life fashion mistakes: “You look back on the 90s and think... Those pants were baggy! One time I got back from a Kenyan college I was visiting and I had bought these flannel pyjama type things. I wore them to school and a friend just started laughing at me.” Occasionally he even wore his own clothes on the show: “I wore t-shirts by bands that I loved. They had to get them cleared but I wore a couple – I wore a ‘Shout Out Louds’ [a Swedish indie band] shirt and some Ohio State gear because I’m from Ohio. People from back home loved that.” 

I'm going to title this interview Ted Talks – If he could give a talk on an idea or something that interests him, what would it be?

“On behavioural contagion. It’s a form of social influence that says that we think we’re autonomous operators, but that we’re really not – we are contagious.” This idea relates to kindness, a topic about which Radnor feels strongly. “I think that every act of kindness is consequential.” His response to the idea of being 'cruel to be kind' was terming it a “shoddy theory”.

After our interview, Radnor worked the chamber admirably. He was friendly and relaxed without trying too hard to get the next laugh, and even when his inspirational quotes about seizing the “here and now” bordered on tacky, the audience kept nodding in approval; at one point, he even managed to ask the question everyone in the audience wonders at some point: “Why should we join the Union?” There was one surprising divide between Radnor and the large majority of the audience that night, however. While I, and probably most of you reading this, have watched all 208 episodes of How I Met Your Mother, he admitted to only having seen about half of them. Happily, he “remember[s] being there, though”.