Hulu released the first look at the new cast for the How I Met Your Mother spin-off, How I Met Your Father, via Collider. The image shows the cast with Hillary Duff (Lizzie McGuire), Chris Lowell (Promising Young Woman), Tom Ainsley (Serpent), Francia Raisa (Grown-ish), and Suraj Sharma (Life of Pi) standing on the Brooklyn Bridge at night.
How I Met Your Father will follow Sophie (played by Duff) and her close-knit group of friends figuring out who they are, what they want out of life, and how they fall in love in a world of dating apps and numerous options.
Showrunners Isaac Aptaker (Love, Simon) and Elizabeth Berger (The New People) spoke with Collider about the technology that allowed the team to recreate the NYC backdrop. The pandemic made it difficult to film on location. One scene sees Sophie and her friends walking the bridge, but with noise, permits, et all, filming on location would be chaotic. Executive producer and director Pamela Fryman (Truth Be Told) decided to use the Infinity Stage on the Disney Burbank lot to remedy that.
The Infinity Stage uses Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) technology which can turn virtual production into episodic television production. The Mandalorian used this technology to create the otherworldly environments in the series.
“I was able to spend the day in Burbank shooting a scene on the Brooklyn Bridge. The logistics and price tag of shooting on location (even when there’s not a pandemic) would have made this scene impossible – but thanks to this new technology the scene is in the can,” she told Collider, expressing her delight using the technology.
Golden Globe winner Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City) was announced to join the cast as an older version of Sophie, similar to Bob Seget (Full House) playing the older version of Ted in the original series.
How I Met Your Father is set to stream on Hulu in early 2022.