HIMYM Stars' $225,000 Salary Was a Far Cry From Neil Patrick Harris' Paycheck
Because Barney had to buy the best suits to impress his ladies.
How I Met Your Mother was a real breakthrough for many of the show's actors. True, some of the actors' names were known to the public prior to their appearance in the sitcom, but it was this hit comedy series that truly cemented them as stars.
And while some of the cast members' careers have stalled nine years after the finale, the fortunes they made on HIMYM still allow them to live comfortably without worrying about doing new projects.
But it turns out absolutely no one in the main cast had a salary as high as Neil Patrick Harris' in the show's final season. It was in fact so huge, the actor could afford to buy a diamond suit just like his character Barney!
In most sitcoms, the ensemble as a whole is far more important than any individual protagonist, and therefore the paycheck is divided equally among the cast members. This was the case with Friends, where all main actors received the same amount for an episode.
By the final season, each of the friends was receiving approximately $1 million per episode — and that seems to be fair, as none of the cast members outshined the others in the show.
The payment scheme was supposed to be the same on How I Met Your Mother. According to their contracts, the lead actors were paid $225,000 per episode, or about $5.4 million per season, and that's not counting royalties. Impressive!
However, that did not seem to suit (pun intended) Neil Patrick Harris. According to Forbes, the actor demanded as much as $400,000 per episode for the last season, which means he made about $9 million for portraying Barney Stinson in the final Season 9.
The payoff is perhaps well-deserved, considering the actor's talent and how much laughter he brought us. But it's also a shame for the rest of the cast because the show wasn't just about Harris' character!
While he wasn't the only one driving the story, most fans saw Barney as an integral part of the gang and the series itself, so Harris' departure from the project would simply destroy it.
It's understandable why the producers agreed to pay the actor as much as he asked for — and, after all, Harris' Barney Stinson was in fact legendary.
Source: Forbes.