TV

Stars reveal favorite moments before one ‘Mother’ of a farewell

After a nine-season run on CBS, the stars of “How I Met Your Mother” can rest on their laurels. In honor of the show’s Monday night series finale, they appeared on the March 27 edition of “Inside the Actors Studio” and discussed their favorite scenes and episodes with host James Lipton. Here’s a glance:


Neil Patrick Harris

CBS
“Girls Versus Suits,” Season 5, Episode 12: Harris indulges his true talents as a song-and-dance man when he breaks into a musical number on the Fox back lot, singing the song “Nothing Suits Me Like a Suit.” The number comes during an episode where Barney dates a female bartender (Stacy Keibler) who doesn’t like men in suits. Barney is forced to choose between the girl and the suits. He dresses casually long enough to seduce her, but while she spends time in his apartment, she accidentally opens his closet full of suits and forces him to choose between her and his suits. Barney breaks into song, dancing on the roof of a yellow New York taxicab, professing his love of suits — only to choose her at the end of the song when he realizes she is “pretty hot.”


Josh Radnor

CBS
“Ten Sessions,” Season 3, Episode 13: Ted (Radnor) is at the clinic to remove his tattoo, where he is attracted to his doctor, Stella (Sarah Chalke). Even though she’s way too busy to go out with him, Ted keeps trying over 10 tattoo-removal sessions. He decides to take her out on a “two-minute date.” They go to dinner at a table at the cafe next door to her practice and a “movie” in clips at the electronics store two doors down. It’s a pretty adorable sequence, and Chalke and Radnor have instant chemistry.


Jason Segel

CBS
“Matchmaker,” Season 1, Episode 7: Marshall (Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) find an unusual creature in their apartment. She thinks it’s a cockroach; he thinks it’s a mouse. They can’t kill it, not with bug spray, not with a whack of the phone book. They end up calling the thing a “cockamouse,” and it sounds hideous: It has six legs, antennae and an exoskeleton, but also tufts of fur, whiskers and a tail. Marshall catches it and takes it to the Columbia University biology department. When Marshall arrives, he finds the “cockamouse” has escaped and must still be in the apartment. Robin (Cobie Smulders) finally sees the creature, and throws a drink at it. Marshall arrives home, grabs the creature and throws it out the window. They then shut the window as it tries to fly back inside.

During the Lipton interview, Hannigan said, “There was one take where we wound up on top of each other in a sandwich.”


Alyson Hannigan

CBS
“Bad News,” Season 6, Episode 13: Lily goes to her appointment with the fertility expert, Dr. John Stangel (Harris), only to discover that he looks exactly like Barney, save for a beard and dark brown hair. To convince her that Stangel and Barney are not the same person, Marshall attends Lily’s appointment and also immediately assumes Stangel and Barney are the same person. Barney shows up, acknowledges the similarity and leaves. After getting Barney and the doctor in the room together throughout the procedure, Lily is convinced that they are, in fact, two different people.

Marshall eventually receives good news about his fertility from Stangel. While at MacLaren’s, he tries to call his father, but Mr. Eriksen does not pick up the phone. Marshall is shocked to learn from Lily that his father died of a heart attack. He is left holding Lily and saying, “I’m not ready for this.”

Hannigan revealed on “Inside the Actors Studio” that she and Segel did the scene in one take.


Cristin Milioti

CBS
“How Your Mother Met Me,” Season 9, Episode 16: The character of the Mother is fleshed out in a series of flashbacks.

“It was such a ‘pinch me’ experience, that for the majority of my time filming it, I was certain that someone would eventually sit me down and explain that it was actually a really elaborate prank with insanely high production values,” says Milioti. “It seemed too much fun and too meaningful to actually be happening. I’ll forever be indebted to [the producers] for allowing me to do that episode.”


Cobie Smulders

CBS
“Of Course,” Season 5, Episode 17: At Ted’s place, Barney tells the gang about his failure to pick up a woman named Anita (Jennifer Lopez). Ted claims that she may have read tips from a certain book called “Of Course You’re Still Single, Take a Look at Yourself, You Dumb Slut.” Barney later discovers that Anita is the author and plans to seduce her. Meanwhile, Robin admits to Marshall and Lily that she met Anita during a segment on her TV show. During the segment, Anita shows Robin how she can break the spirit of men like Barney by saying, “No.”

Barney tells Ted about his failure to find a counter-strategy in Anita’s book. Ted concocts a strategy (in song) of a plan to combine 17 dates into one “super-date,” which Barney says is gooey and romantic.

“I chose this episode because the super date encompasses everything I love about our show — music, humor and heart,” Smulders tells The Post. “The super date song was shot in one take with Josh and Neil singing beautifully, watching the crew and our extras move at hyper speed was amazing. Then seeing how our special effects team filled in the green screen made it all feel like magic.”

The episode ends with Anita confronting Barney at the bar for not showing up on their own date and is flustered that he uses her own “No” strategy against her.