How I Met Your Father: Hilary Duff, Chris Lowell, Tien Tran on the Hulu Sitcom

Editor’s note: The following interview contains some spoilers for How I Met Your Father.The Hulu original comedy series How I Met Your Father follows Sophie (Hilary Duff, who also serves as a producer on the project) and her close-knit group of friends as they experience all the ups and downs and speed bumps on the road that happen as you’re trying to figure out life, love and career. If the title seems familiar, you’re not wrong – How I Met Your Mother, the 2005 series that ran for nine seasons, established the format of going back and forth between the past and the present in its storytelling until finally revealing who the mother is. This new show, which is being considered a sequel and not a continuation, follows that same format, with Kim Cattrall playing the role of Sophie in the near future and telling the story to her son.

At the show’s virtual junket, co-stars Duff, Chris Lowell, who plays Jesse, an Uber driver until he can make something else work, and Tien Tran, who plays Ellen, Jesse’s adoptive sister and someone who seems to know who she is and what she wants more than the others, spoke to Collider about why it’s so great to make a show where you can laugh and have fun together, being new to the sitcom game, how cocktails helped with cast chemistry, that none of them actually know who the father is (and that Duff doesn’t think even the creative team knows yet), and why they don’t feel pressure to live up to their predecessor.

Collider: What is the best part about getting to make a sitcom, work with people you actually really like, and get to laugh and have fun together, especially when life outside is a crazy and scary hellscape? What is it like to go home with a smile on your face?

CHRIS LOWELL: It’s freakin’ amazing! I’m in New York right now, and to live in a world where I can be walking around the New York streets without an N95 mask on, where the biggest stress of my life is what my Tinder profile looks like, is a wonderful world to live in. It’s a wonderful way to experience New York, that I frankly miss dearly and hope will come back soon. But I think you said it all in your question, being able to spend time with people that I genuinely love and being able to be put in scenarios where I have to try not to laugh all day long is a great way to go to and come home from work.

HILARY DUFF: We all got to know each other with masks on and there’s a genuine respect for one another and an interest in each other’s lives because we’re all new to each other’s lives. And then, the writers wrote this amazing script for us, to go and expose this goofy, sometimes raw, emotional side. It was all in the scripts, and we all really watched each other work because that’s how the format works of sitcom, that we were all really new to. It was like, “Oh, we’re all on standby because that’s gonna happen really quick. And now we’re jumping to this scene and that one.” We were all there with each other, pretty much the whole season, watching everything that was happening. And I think there was a giddy feeling about being on the Paramount lot in Hollywood. It was romantic as hell. I Love Lucy shot at our stages. Cheers shot at our stages. I think we walked in knowing we were all really going to show up for our jobs. We had a really good script with a great force of people behind us, and we were like, “We think this is gonna work.” Just getting to show up there every day and have fun, it was awesome. We’re all really grateful to be sitting where we’re sitting.

TIEN TRAN: They said everything. I echo everything that they say. It’s true. We were there for each other. Personally, I felt like I learned so much from being on set with this amazing cast and crew and writers and our director, Pam Fryman. That was also so exciting. We were all new to this, and I felt like a sponge, just soaking in everyone else’s essence and spirit and energy. Thankfully, it was just all positive and good. You said it, coming home with a smile, I feel very grateful to have gotten to do that.

And I realized I was totally making an assumption that you all like each other, but it seems that you all like each other.

DUFF: We do.

LOWELL: It really does feel like, in order for a sitcom to work, li the most important thing is cast chemistry. Really all you’re watching as an audience member is five, six, or however many people in the cast, just having fun together. You can’t fake that. What was a huge relief, probably more for the producers and the writers than anyone else, is that when we all met each other, immediately, there was such a profound respect and excitement about working with each other.

DUFF: And there were cocktails.

LOWELL: There was a large amount of alcohol, which also helps. But the cast chemistry was immediate and exists off-screen as well as on. It’s a blast to work with your friends.

Are you guys all told from the beginning who the father is? Do none of you know? How does that work? Hilary, do you know because you’re a producer on the show?

DUFF: No, they don’t trust me like that. The storyline didn’t end up happening, but they told me some big news, and I was like, “I have big news, but we all have to be together.” I feel like they’re testing us.

LOWELL: If we learn any information, all of us together in a collection, we’re bum-rushing to tell each other what’s going on. It’s ridiculous.

DUFF: So no, we don’t know the dad, and we’ve given up guessing because we know that they’re just having fun with us at this point. It’s like a cat batting around a toy feather thing because they’re never gonna tell us. And I don’t even think they know. Tien’s favorite line is to say, “He has hair, a face, a body and some style. We do know who he is.”

And he’s been in the show.

DUFF: Yeah, we’ve seen his face.

I love that we get the connection with the apartment. What was it like to be on that set? Does that make you feel a sense of responsibility to walk onto that set?

DUFF: Honestly, what I’ve been thinking about is really that’s the biggest tie in with the show. These are just the new people living in this apartment that everybody knows and loves. I love that that takes the pressure off of our show, and sends us off into being our own show. I’m not the girl version of Ted. Tom’s not Barney. It’s not like that. But you do realize like, “Oh, this is the home of the new people that live in this apartment that we’ve spent so much time in,” and that’s a really cool way to send us off. And then, there are other things that happen. We might have a visitor, here and there. But really, it’s its own show. We’re borrowing the playing with the past and the present, in those quick pops, but I think that really just gives the show energy and is a quick way to tell a story and give information. It just adds that energy to the show.

TRAN: I love that we get that in the first episode because I do think it takes the pressure off of us. It’s setting the tone of the spirit of the original, in that it’s a group of friends that you’re gonna learn about that have these amazing relationships and that have so much heart. At the core, that’s what was so exciting about How I Met Your Mother. We’re a completely different show with new characters, new people, and new friendships that I hope everyone falls in love with. As I watched our episodes, I was just rooting for everyone. I’m a fan of every single one of the characters that we get to know and love. That’s what’s so exciting about How I Met Your Father.

LOWELL: I think the smartest thing that the writers did was not try and find who our Barney is gonna be and who our Ted Mosby is gonna be. There’s no way that anyone’s gonna live up to those characters except for the actors themselves, so why try to duplicate that? The result of that is that it feels like a continuation of this world with some of these sets and some of these circumstances, and maybe even some of the characters that we might meet, that harken back to the original, but don’t feel like we’re like playing in the exact same script structure every single time. We really get to go a lot of different directions while occasionally dipping our toe back in the water of the world of the original, which I think is really fun for every single audience member, whether you’re coming to the show new or you were a diehard fan of the original.

DUFF: I think honestly sometimes we forget that there’s pressure to live up to. It’s not until a producer will come on set and be like, “Oh, remember, don’t post any photos inside the apartment.” And we’re like, “Oh, yeah, that’s right. It’s a big deal.” (Executive producer) Carter [Bays] brought the swords from the apartment, that he’s had in his house for the past eight years since their show ended, and now they’re above the fireplace. When my husband saw that, he was like, “Those are the swords!” He was stoked on it. You’re gonna get a lot of that, but for someone who didn’t watch the show, you’re not lost.

All of these characters have plenty of their own personal drama.

DUFF: Yeah, it’s just 30-year-olds that are navigating 30s. That’s what made all of those shows so wonderful and endearing, and we hope to do that too. I think that’s what we take most from them, just these normal experiences, but putting them on camera.

The first two episodes of How I Met Your Father are now available to stream at Hulu.

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