How I Met Your Mother's Jason Segel recalls 'tough' time during beloved series

Jason Segel has reflected on a 'tough' period of his career while filming How I Met Your Mother.

Segel shot to fame on the well-loved CBS sitcom in 2005 alongside the likes of Cobie Smulders and Neil Patrick Harris.

The show ran for nine years, following in the footsteps of other popular sitcoms like Scrubs and The Middle which also ran for just short of a decade.

While finding his feet as Marshall Eriksen on the show, Segel was also balancing movie projects like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, I Love You, Man and more - a difficult task for even the most experienced of actors.

Segel was only 24 when he filmed the first season oh How I Met Your Mother, alongside which he was shooting for Knocked Up with Leslie Mann, Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl and Paul Rudd.

"I had a really strange thing happening during How I Met Your Mother," Segel told UNILAD.

Jason Segel pictured with his How I Met Your Mother co-stars (Imeh Akpanudosen/Getty Images)

"I mean, Knocked Up was season one of How I Met Your Mother, Forgetting Sarah Marshall was season two of How I Met Your Mother, and then as How I Met Your Mother went on I was writing these movies [such as] Five-Year Engagement and The Muppets and shooting them in these little crammed windows between seasons."

Going on to note how hard it was balancing so much work at once, the Shrinking star continued: "I think, less having to do with anything than How I Met Your Mother, I just felt tired. I felt like, 'God, this would all be so much easier if I had time and space and some control over the schedule.'

"And now I look back with some distance and think that it's the best thing that ever happened to me, but it's tough to see when you're young."

The actor added: "I was 24 when that show started and 33 when it ended. So, yeah; those are really years where you're figuring yourself out, right?"

Jason Segel reflected on his successful - and extremely busy - career (Michael Rowe/Getty Images for IMDb)

Another movie he made while still starring on How I Met Your Mother was 2012's This Is 40.

"That was a really fun one," Segel said of the film. "We hit a real special pocket there when we were making those movies. And it's interesting because, you know, the business changed, and the way movies and TV are shown changed."

He went on to say he feared that 'this moment was over' and just 'felt lucky it happened' - but then Shrinking came along.

"I feel just as lucky about this as I did about making all those movies," he said of the hit AppleTV+ series.

"I feel like I've found a great home at the show."

Shrinking season two will premiere globally with the first two episodes on Wednesday, October 16, on Apple TV+, followed by one new episode weekly, every Wednesday until December 25, 2024.