Hilary Duff’s How I Met Your Father Full Cast Revealed In First Look
Hulu has finally released the first look image of Hilary Duff and other series regulars of the upcoming series How I Met Your Father. It looks like a winning group.
The shooting of How I Met Your Father finally got going a few months ago after the many hiccups the show has faced since it was first conceptualized almost a decade ago. The series is a spinoff of the hit comedy sitcom, How I Met Your Mother, which starred Neil Patrick Harris, Jason Segel, Josh Radnor, Cobie Smulders, Alyson Hannigan, and was narrated by Bob Saget. While the cast for the spinoff, led by Hilary Duff, had already been announced, Hulu has finally debuted the first look of the show’s lead characters.
The first photo (via Variety) of the highly awaited How I Met Your Father shows series regulars Chris Lowell as Jesse, Francia Raisa as Valentina, Tom Ainsley as Charlie, Hilary Duff as Sophie, Tien Tran as Ellen, and Suraj Sharma as Sid. The show, set in the near future, will see an older Sophie (Kim Cattrall) telling her young son how she and his father met. The flashback story will be set in the year 2021 and depict Sophie and her group of close friends as they navigate life and figure out love in an era of dating apps.
While, from the looks of it, the cast seems to be standing on the real Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, in reality, the picture was taken at the new virtual stage, The Infinity, in Los Angeles, California. This is the same place where the critically acclaimed Star Wars’ series The Mandalorian has been previously shot. Reportedly, showrunners Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger wanted to shoot a sequence for an episode where Hilary Duff’s Sophie will be seen walking on the renowned bridge accompanied by her friends. But there were many difficulties in shooting the scene, whether it was the still-present COVID-19 pandemic or the difficulty in securing permits.
Thus, executive producer Pamela Fryman (who will also be directing the pilot episode of How I Met Your Father) made plans to instead shoot the scene with Hilary Duff and the cast by using the 700 state-of-the-art LED panels at the Infinity Stage on Disney Burbank Lot to recreate the bridge virtually. Fryman has expressed that she is in total awe of the technology as shooting the scene on the real Brooklyn Bridge would have been a logistical and financial mistake. “The logistics and price tag of shooting on location (even when there’s not a pandemic) would have made this scene impossible — but thanks to this new technology the scene is in the can,” Fryman said.
As for more details about the plot of How I Met Your Father, they are being kept under tight wraps for now. Fans of How I Met Your Mother have also been wondering whether the spinoff will connect to the original show. Earlier this year, during an appearance on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show, Hilary Duff did confirm that the upcoming show will have several ties to the first series and will “hopefully” include guest appearances of the original cast. She has also revealed that How I Met Your Father will take after the original show as the story will be revisiting the “whole rabbit hole of like, well, which one was the father?” How I Met Your Father is set to debut on Hulu and will have its premiere in early 2022.
