You may know him as Ted Mosby on How I Met Your Mother. However, the man behind the character is more than just a sitcom actor. Josh Radnor is a writer, director, producer and an actor — all wrapped into one and sometimes all at once.
In 2010, Radnor became a writer/director for the first time in his then decade-long history in the film and TV industry with Happythankyoumoreplease.
Happythankyoumoreplease functions both as a fun and thoughtful look into the interactions of an ensemble of characters living in New York City (one of whom, Sam, is played by Radnor himself), as well as a dialogue-rich indie opus which proves insightful and cleverly dense despite its simplicity.
This is characteristic of Radnor, whose latest personal work was Liberal Arts, a film in which he also starred as well as wrote, directed and produced. Liberal Arts tells the story of Jesse Fisher (Radnor), a 30-something who returns to his Ohioan liberal arts college, only to find a kindred spirit in a 19-year-old student at the school who goes by Zibby. The movie was filmed at Kenyon College, Radnor's alma mater, raising the question of how deep Radnor's ties are between his subjects, his storylines, his characters and himself.
Radnor took time out of his schedule for a Q-and-A prior to his visit to Northwestern's campus, presented by NU Hillel.
Tell us a little about what your creative process is like as far as writing your films or preparing to perform the role of Ted on How I Met Your Mother.
In my writing process, I'll get an idea and then characters start coming to me and they'll be kind of hazy and unformed. And I'll kind of listen for them to start talking and communicating. I start writing scenes that occur to me, a lot of which don't end up in the final film. Sometimes it's confusing and you don't know where you're going and you lose the plot quite literally, but mostly it's about just having a strong enough initial premise and characters that seem interesting enough that you want to spend time [with them]. For me the best thing is having questions and themes that I think are worthy of my time.
On the TV show, I get a script every week and I look at it as an actor. [The writers] are building the character along with you building the character. Because sometimes, you know, in season three, your character will pick up a different quirk that you didn't have in the first two seasons. So you have to fold that into the mix. But a lot of it is not cerebral at this point — the character lives and you know how that character relates to the other people and you're just flying by the seat of your pants in a fun way.
Which of your characters — either that you've written or that you've acted as — would you say is the most like you?
The characters in both my movies maybe taken together would hint at something kind of like me. It's always a tough question to answer because you're seeing 90 minutes or two hours of something and a life is really complicated and complex. Even though I'm playing a character, it's good to keep in mind that I'm writing all of the characters, so there's part of me in all [of them], not just the character I'm playing.
A lot of your characters seem to be pretty literary, but you studied theater in school, right?
Well, Kenyon [College] is not a theater school, it's a proper liberal arts school, and I studied off-campus one semester when I got a lot of my theater credits. So most of my classes were English and Philosophy and History. I was actually an English major up until my junior year. I probably took as many or more English classes at Kenyon than I did theater classes.
Would you say that your time at Kenyon were some of the best years of your life, since that's a major theme of Liberal Arts?
I wouldn't say that, actually. I had a hard time adjusting to not being on an academic schedule, but I got over it quicker than Jesse does [in Liberal Arts]. But I liked that as a provocative idea — someone who never got over college. I definitely resist the whole "those were the best years of your life" kind of thing because I think then you're just kind of screwed. You have nothing left but memories and nostalgia. And Liberal Arts in some ways is a critique of nostalgia and it's a critique of overly romanticizing the past.
Can you speak to what it's like to balance multiple projects at once or even the different hats that you wear on a single film set?
When I'm doing the movie stuff, there seems to be no separation. It's not like I feel like, "oh, right now I'm wearing my writing hat, right now I'm wearing my directing hat, right now I'm wearing my acting hat." It's all happening at once.
In my next movie, I haven't written myself a part. I'm really looking forward to just being behind the camera because that was a great joy for me. In Liberal Arts I had too big a part. There were days that I just couldn't believe that I had to be in front of the camera the whole day. It just felt so overwhelming. So I'm looking forward to giving myself a break from that.
Can you tell me a little more about the projects you're working on now?
I would, but I'm really superstitious and I don't think it's good to talk about stuff as its still in its infancy. I'm coming to the end of a first draft of a new movie. I'm very excited about it. It's definitely a departure — it's very strange and hopefully, I think, pretty exciting. But superstition forbids me from talking any more about it.
Northwestern's Hillel Center is sponsoring your visit to Northwestern on Thursday, so could you speak to how being raised Jewish had any significant effect on either who you are as a person or your creative voice?
I do think it's significant that there's a long rich history of Jewish entertainers and writers and directors. So something of the culture: It's a very verbal culture, it's a very funny culture, it's a very self-conscious culture — and I don't mean that pejoratively — it's people who have great insight into themselves and are very honest about their neuroses and their shortcomings and it's a combustible mix of qualities that are, for lack of a better word, dramatic. So I know when I got onto the stage and then started reading plays and seeing the whole world of the New York theater — which was the first thing that I was really obsessed with — it felt to me somewhat familiar. It felt like there was a home there for me. And whatever language they were speaking was a language that I intuitively understood.
Were there any particular writers or directors, either of the Jewish persuasion or just in general who affected you early on?
Well two of my favorite films are Tootsie, which is a Sydney Pollack movie and Broadcast News which is a James L. Brooks movie. I'm just putting it together that those are both Jewish directors. In my senior year, my senior thesis production was a play called Sight Unseen by Donald Margulies, who is another Jewish writer. In college I did a David Mamet play, and I did a Neil Simon play.
I also read a lot of Philip Roth my senior year and became very enamored with his writing. And I think he taught me a lot about character and rhythm and dialogue, for sure. I'm soured on his themes a little bit. I'm not as interested in death and decaying potency as he is, but at a certain point in my life, his books were speaking to me more than any other writer.
For someone who is a fan of your films or your work, what would you suggest be the next movie or director they look into watching or learning more about?
Criterion Collection had a 24-hour 50 percent off sale, and I went a little nuts and I think I bought 20 or so DVDs of these classic films I'd never seen. You know, Louis Malle films, Roberto Rossellini, Bergman, Fellini, De Sica. I was really taken by this film called Murmur of the Heart by Louis Malle. It's a French film and it's very strange. It felt as alive and kind of crackling with energy as any film that I've seen in a really long time.
And funnily enough, I re-watched The Karate Kid, which is streaming on Netflix — the original Karate Kid — which I'd seen, I don't know, 80 times when I was kid and I hadn't seen it in years. But I didn't realize how much that movie had affected me and how amazingly it holds up. There are certain movies that — not that they're a guilty pleasure because I think it's actually viewed as a good movie — but people remember it as being a little kitschy, but I think it really holds up and it's a great sports film if nothing else, but it's actually a great "movie-movie."
Are there any questions that you wished you might be asked in interviews that you've never been asked?
My first movie did really well in Spain and my second movie is still open in Spain, I don't know how it's doing but it's still playing. Sometimes in America there's a little bit of a "You're a guy from TV, did you really direct this?" There's a kind of skepticism about me as a director. Whereas I felt in Spain they take filmmakers very seriously. So the questions were really deep in terms of content.
A few of the journalists really seemed to get the spiritual undertone of my movies which I think is there in both of them. You can certainly appreciate them on other terms and watch them for story and character and humor, or all those things, but underneath it is a very subtle or not-so-subtle spirituality, or something about forces that are working on us that are unseen. I liked that they picked up on that.
An Evening with Josh Radnor, a sold-out presentation by NU Hillel, will take place on April 25 at 8 p.m. in Tech Auditorium.