LOS ANGELES, Feb. 21 (UPI) -- Josh Radnor plays a father navigating the '70s sexual revolution in the movie Three Birthdays, now on digital video-on-demand. He is also launching a podcast revisiting his TV comedy How I Met Your Mother, premiering March 10.
Radnor, 50, discussed both projects in a recent Zoom interview with UPI. In Birthdays, he plays Rob, a man in an open relationship with his wife, Kate (Annie Pariss) in 1970.
When their 17-year-old daughter, Bobbie (Nuala Cleary), catches Kate with her other partner it creates friction in the family. Radnor said the dialogue written by director Jane Weinstock and her co-writer Nevin Schreiner sounded like authentic conversations from the '70s.
"I think that what Jane was exploring was a family that was really trying to just open up lines of communication in some healthy ways and a lot of disastrous ways," Radnor said. "I think we all carry lofty ideals and we're often confronted with the limits of how reality will or won't bend to our will."
Kate was a virgin when she met Rob, and they agreed to the open relationship during the rise of feminism in the '60s. Radnor said he enjoyed playing the mismatch of Rob's supportive speech while clearly feeling threatened by the other man.
"He's fine with him opening up the marriage but less fine with his wife opening up the marriage," Radnor said. "So there's a kind of baked-in double standard that he didn't, I don't think, realize he would trip up on."
That conflict made Rob appealing to Radnor.
"I don't want to play characters who have everything figured out and are just a model of virtue," he said. "That's not really fun because who is that? It's more fun to play people who are almost at odds with themselves."
Rob shows further hypocrisy when he neglects to tell Bobbie he is also participating in the open relationship.
"I think when he sees his daughter's rage at the mother, he doesn't want to be on the receiving end of that," Radnor said. "He's comfortable on some level with her being mad. I mean, he's upset about it but he's more comfortable with her being mad at the mother than he is with his daughter being mad at him."
Radnor has appeared mostly in dramas since How I Met Your Mother ended in 2014. He played a teacher in the NBC drama Rise and a Nazi hunter in the Prime Video drama Hunters.
Other roles include a drug-addicted doctor in PBS drama Mercy Street and episodes of the series Grey's Anatomy and Fleishman is in Trouble.
"I was just looking for roles that felt not like How I Met Your Mother and not like the character I played," Radnor said. "I don't know that I have any hard and fast rules for what I'll do or what genre except I just want it to be good."
The decision to revisit How I Met Your Mother came from Radnor's personal life. Last year, he married psychologist Jordana Jacobs and she wanted to watch his show for the first time.
"The idea of formalizing the rewatch and watching it for the first time with my wife came to me," Radnor said. "When I watch the show, I actually do know why it worked because I feel like there's something about watching the five of us at that bar that's really appealing."
How I Met Your Mother opens in 2005 when Ted Mosby (Radnor) was single. In the future, older Ted (Bob Saget) tells his children (David Henrie and Lyndsy Fonseca) the story of how he met their mother. Ted's friends were played by Neil Patrick Harris, Cobie Smulders, Jason Segal and Alyson Hannigan.
For eight of the nine seasons, the show dangled the possibility of which female character could be the mother. In the final season, Cristin Milioti stars as the mother, Tracy.
The ending was actually filmed while Henrie and Fonseca were still children. Radnor said he was aware of what they filmed but forgot about it as the show continued.
"Around the eighth season, they said, 'We're still planning to do that,'" Randor said. "I kind of put it in the back of my head for about seven seasons."
Every time Ted broke up with a girlfriend, the kids grew more frustrated that he had not gotten to the point of the story yet. Because the show kept getting renewed, Ted's story grew longer and longer.
"It was more about the journey that it took and the man he had to become before he could meet this woman," Radnor said. "I think if you love that show, you're less concerned with the destination and just enjoying the journey."
Radnor will host his podcast, called How We Made Your Mother, with How I Met Your Mother co-creator Craig Thomas. Thomas' partner in the series, Carter Bays, will appear on the show.
A sequel series, How I Met Your Father, ran for two seasons on Hulu. Smulders and Harris guest starred, but there was no role for Ted before the series ended. Radnor said he did correspond with Father star Hilary Duff.
"Hilary Duff and I had some great email exchanges about playing the I in How I Met Your universe, but no, I never got to be on the show."
