Neil Patrick Harris says How I Met Your Mother character may be ‘offensive in retrospect’

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Neil Patrick Harris says that his character Barney Stinson in the hit American sitcom How I Met Your Mother may be “offensive in retrospect”. In an interview with The Guardian, Harris was asked about recent criticism of the character, particularly Barney’s attitudes towards women and how he utilised forms of manipulation to woo potential love interests. “In doing so, he’s fictionalising the narrative and he’s talking about his friend who was the wing man, the buddy, the guy that was always wanting to party and have fun and make any experience an event.” “So, I think of Barney as this weird anti‑superhero, who when he failed would just make up a story to make him succeed.” When it comes to re-analysing past shows from a modern perspective, Harris said he was unsure about “critiquing the supposed insensitivities”. He said: “Some people will be offended by it in retrospect – and there’s not much one can do in retrospect.” The cast of How I Met Your Mother, which ran for 208 episodes “But the experience of making that show for nine seasons was very good energy… and there was never a sense of doing things with bad intent,” he added.