Hilary Duff was announced earlier this year as the lead for Hulu's new series, How I Met Your Father, the long-gestating sequel to CBS' hit sitcom How I Met Your Mother. The new project's full cast was recently revealed, and you can bet they have been pumped to get production going for the first season. And now we have our first look at the group all together.
While we're presumably still a ways out from getting any kind of footage, Hilary Duff shared a first look from the How I Met Your Father set, and noted that they're likely situated next to a pretty memorable location from How I Met Your Mother's run.
How I Met Your Father will mark Hilary Duff’s first series post-Younger, which ended its seven-season run earlier this year on Hulu and Paramount+ (though it’s still airing on TV Land). And here, Duff can be seen with her new co-stars, including Francia Raisa, Chris Lowell, Tom Ainsley, Suraj Sharma, Brandon Michael Hall, and Tien Tran. Everybody's holding up scripts, so we can only imagine what's on those pages.
Similar to CBS’ How I Met Your Mother, the 10-episode first season of How I Met Your Father features a near-future storyline and will follow Hilary Duff as Sophie, who is regaling her son with the titular tale of how she and his father met and blossomed their relationship in 2021. At this point, any potential crossover details have yet to be revealed, so it's not quite clear why the new show's cast would be in front of the old show's set. Unless some of these characters also frequented McLaren's, the bar below Marshall & Co.'s apartment. But she did specifically mention the apartment and not the bar's exterior, so... Who knows?
This isn’t the first sequel or spin-off series to be developed as an extension of the How I Met Your Mother-verse. A How I Met Your Dad series would have starred Greta Gerwig but CBS didn’t like the pilot and the series got delayed. Now it looks like How I Met Your Father is in full swing at Hulu and fans are appropriately excited.
Prior to joining How I Met Your Father, Hilary Duff was set to star in a Younger spin-off that didn't go forward, and also filmed two episodes of Disney+'s proposed Lizzie McGuire reboot for Disney+ before the show’s creator left the project over creative differences. There was talk about moving the show to Hulu, but it was put in limbo after Disney was unable to find another showrunner. So rather than carrying on Lizzie's story, she'll be bringing a new chapter into this memory-sharing world created by Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger.
There isn’t too much else known about How I Met Your Father just yet, but it’s likely that more details will be released once more filming has been completed. It will be interesting to see just how similar or alike the series is to its predecessor. Most fans loved the majority of How I Met Your Mother, aside from the very controversial ending, so hopefully they will love How I Met Your Father just as much without any major criticisms. With big names like Hilary Duff starring in the series, it shouldn’t be hard to draw in a crowd.
There’s no news on a premiere date for How I Met Your Father, but stay tuned for updates, and check out all the other shows hitting the 2021 Fall TV schedule soon!
