Jason Segel reveals why he started not to enjoy himself during How I Met Your Mother

For Jason Segel, starring in “How I Met Your Mother” caused some problems IRL.The actor, 45, opened up about how working on the long-running sitcom made balancing his movie career difficult.“The way my life was for about six years was I would be shooting ‘How I Met Your Mother,'” Segel said on Monday’s episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s “Awards Chatter” podcast.“And during that time, I would be writing a movie that we would then shoot on the four months off and get done in time to get back to ‘How I Met Your Mother.'”The show aired for nine seasons from 2005 to 2014 and also starred Josh Radnor, Neil Patrick Harris, Cobie Smulders, and Alyson Hannigan.“And it was an amazing time.

It was an electric time.But I also was getting a little tired and I was starting to not enjoy myself so much,” admitted Segel.

“And that was a bummer because I was doing such cool things.” During his time on the hit show, the “Shrinking” star received some sound advice from Judd Apatow.The director, 57, was the one who executive-produced the young star’s first-ever television series, “Freaks and Geeks,” in 1999.“Judd had instilled this thing in us during ‘Freaks and Geeks,’ where he said, ‘If you can improv the way that you can, then you can write.

I just need to teach you how to write,'” Segel explained.He recalled that Apatow told him, “You’re a weird dude, and the only way you’re going to make it is if you write your own material.”Segel then “pitched” Apatow “lightly” on a script of his own: “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” “I went to Hawaii, and I rented a little house in Hawaii.And I wrote ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ in two months, and then we made it.

And then I was kind of off to the races,” he recounted.Segel wrote the script during a hiatus from “How I Met Your Mother” after the first season.The 2008 rom-com went on to be a huge hit and starred Kristen Bell, Russell Brand, Mila Kunis, Pa...