HIMYM Star Reveals His Jim Audition for The Office — And What Really Happened
Before he was Ted Mosby, Josh Radnor was this close to being Jim Halpert on The Office — and now he’s spilling the story of that audition. Here’s how the HIMYM star nearly landed Scranton’s most beloved prankster.
File this under fun casting what-ifs: before he was Ted Mosby, Josh Radnor took a swing at playing Jim Halpert on The Office. He just walked through the whole thing on a podcast, and it is a very early-2000s actor story in the best way.
Radnor vs. Halpert, back at the start
On a recent episode of the How We Made Your Mother podcast, Radnor said he was hustling for every big sitcom at the time — think Arrested Development and, yep, The Office. When he got in the room for Jim, though, he was a little adrift on what, exactly, made that guy tick.
He told Jenna Fischer (Pam herself) that he could not quite tell if Jim was supposed to be the smart guy or more of a dazed floater. That uncertainty crept into his improv during the audition, and he realized in real time he might have shaded Jim a little too dim — not the target vibe for that character or that show.
"I just think I didn't quite understand the tone exactly... and it all landed in the right place anyway."
Radnor called the tryout "not terrible," just not the right fit. Capturing Jim's specific mix of wry, sweet, and sly requires you to have the show's deadpan tone locked in, and he admits he did not at that point. It is a small but telling behind-the-scenes detail about how much tone matters on a mockumentary sitcom.
How it played out
The part went to John Krasinski, who turned Jim into the lovable prank artist and Pam's long game over nine seasons, from 2005 to 2013. In hindsight, Radnor is pretty zen about it — Jim landed with the right guy, and Radnor found his own nine-season destiny soon after with How I Met Your Mother. Honestly, everyone won here.