Neil Patrick Harris
Interview By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com
It’s often said that very few child or teen performers can make a successful transition into careers as adults. Most of them either quietly have their careers shift into lower gear or become plagued with all sorts of personal and professional problems as adults.
The former almost seemed to be the case for Neil Patrick Harris, until just a few years ago. Proving himself a fairly gifted child star, he soon propelled himself into major TV stardom and teen idol status as the title character on the ABC dramedy Doogie Howser, M.D..
However, after four years on the show and receiving a Golden Globe nod for Best Comedy TV Acting Performance, Harris mostly retreated into theater on Broadway, where he continued to receive critical acclaim.
After a most unlikely cameo role playing a drug-addled, nymphomaniac parody of himself in the stoner comedy Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, the now 34 year old Harris has enjoyed an immense career revival on TV. He has received enormous popularity, acclaim, and even his first Emmy nomination with his role as notorious ladies man Barney Stinson on the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother.
It would only be fitting that Neil’s distorted, screen version of himself would return in the new sequel Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. However, when asked about how he was first approached to do the first Harold and Kumar, Harris claims he was almost talked out of it because it painted him in such a bizarre manner.
“I was tickled pink by the whole notion of it,” he claims, “I had first heard about it and was told it was a bad idea by a friend. He had read this script and he said that I was in it and that he knew about it and was ‘very concerned’ about it for me. I was hilarious. The idea that the private life that we all try to maintain is posed in such an absolute fabricated way that makes me look super awesome is rare, so I jumped at the opportunity.”
The actor also said he was impressed by how unlike most traditionally lazy and exploitative stoner films like Up In Smoke, Half-Baked, and The Wash, Harold and Kumar manages to transcend the subgenre’s limitations by using its dimwitted pot humor as a mere springboard for racially and politically-conscious subtext reflecting on the stereotyping of its main characters, who both happen to be Asian.
“It’s an impressive feat and I think the fact that they are the protagonists, but it’s a comedy, so it’s not heavy-handed,” Neil claims, “You’re able to parody the intensity of those situations in a unique way and you have two actors that are so talented at what they do. That they are able to take something that could be taken too far and they know to pull back. They know how to do it offhanded as opposed to
