Neil Patrick Harris Chose Money Over His How I Met Your Mother Co-Stars During Negotiations! And He Walked Away With Bank Thanks To It!

When contract negotiation time comes around on a hit show, sitcom stars often stand together and strike a new deal as a cast, rather than individually.
Like in 2002, when the six stars of Friends famously asked for $1 MILLION an episode each and got what they wanted because of their strength in numbers!
But when the cast of How I Met Your Mother tried to do the same thing, there was one holdout who didn’t have the whole “all for one, one for all” attitude!
Neil Patrick Harris!
He admitted to Howard Stern this morning that when it came time to cut a new contract deal with CBS, he ditched the rest of the gang and ended up getting MORE money!
NPH spilled:

├óΓé¼┼ô…It├óΓé¼Γäós season 4 to 5 and it├óΓé¼Γäós time to like, see, now we├óΓé¼Γäóre in syndication so everyone starts asking for more money and everyone gathers together internally and decides, ├óΓé¼╦£do we want to go individually and make our own deals or do we want to go in unified as a cast and all go together?├óΓé¼Γäó I just felt like, it seemed like, we all had individual careers that we had nurtured up until that point. And so when you end up with an agent and a manager and an attorney that you have relationships with and they├óΓé¼Γäóre hardcore fighting for you, fighting for you financially and for your future, that to have solidarity with someone who has done less or ├óΓé¼┬ª you├óΓé¼Γäóre fighting for yourself and your take within it. So it wasn├óΓé¼Γäót like I was trying to take someone else├óΓé¼Γäós money, I just wanted my team to fight as hard as they could for me for my next season├óΓé¼Γäós work.”

And they did!
Neil ended up getting $250,000 per episode! More than any other cast member at that time!
Eventually, all of the stars of HIMYM were making $250K a week, but it was Barney who got himself his legend…wait for it…DARY deal first!
Howard exclaimed:

“So the assh*le was you!├óΓé¼┬¥

HA!
NPH certainly isn’t an assh*le but his assh*le-ish character was a HUGE reason why the show became such a success! We can see why Mr. Harris would go solo into the negotiation room!
But we’re also a bit surprised that he would abandon his TV buds like that! What a SLAP in the face!
We wonder what would have been the payout if Ted, Robin, Lily, Marshall, and Barney actually did band together to try to get a group deal?