Josh Radnor on happythankyoumoreplease, Accepting Love, and His Woody Allen Problem

I wanted to ask you about some of the lines you gave Zoe Kazan's character Mary Catherine. There's one point where she starts discussing Woody Allen, and she says she wishes he'd be less prolific...

You know, I had that in there and I'm legitimately a Woody Allen fan and I took that out, initially. I wrote her another line, something about loving a darkened room full of people and how it's the best way to watch a movie, but we did it in one take, and by far the best take was the one where the Woody Allen line was in there. Apologies to the Woodman, because I genuinely don't mean to offend, but I saw that Larry David movie he did...

Whatever Works?

...and I didn't enjoy it all that much, so in a fit of rage, I threw that line back in there. Now, when I see it, I think, "I don't know." We tried just cutting into the scene and cutting that line, but it was kind of abrupt. We'll see what happens with it. I mean him no disrespect. [Laughs]

Zoe's character is also very ambivalent -- even angry -- when her boyfriend Charlie asks her to move to Los Angeles with him. Were you unhappy about moving there?

No, I'm actually a great lover of Los Angeles. I'm a big defender of it, and you wouldn't necessarily know it from the movie, but I've told people that I believe every thing that Charlie says about L.A. and New York, both pro and con, and I also believe everything Mary Catherine says about it. I really believe the thing about "There's no such thing as Los Angeles," that it's just this random collection of neighborhoods that reflects you back, wherever you are at that time. New York definitely has more of a personality that you have to deal with -- like, you're either in the flow of that current, or you're getting crushed. I love New York, but when I moved to L.A., maybe it was the sunshine or something, but things just felt more possible. The character of California has always had the Gold Rush and people going out to seek their fortune; you can reinvent yourself out there, and that's really thrilling. My ex-girlfriend used to say, "As an actor, you can wake up on Monday with nothing going on, and by Friday, a life-changing thing can happen to you."

And you believe that.

It really does seem to move that fast, and you don't necessarily notice it at the time. Like, How I Met Your Mother was the fourth or fifth pilot I had done, and I thought it might be something special, but only now do I realize, "Oh, when I got that pilot, it really was a life-changer."

I liked that Mary Catherine wasn't just hostile to New York but even defensive, because I really tend to see that when New Yorkers discuss Los Angeles.

In some ways, I feel like New Yorkers are defending their right to be miserable. [Laughs] It's a really silly position to take: "Don't tell me that there's happiness available elsewhere!" I remember some professional intellectual wit said she just hated how Giuliani cleaned up the movie. "New York used to only be for those tough enough to live here. Now everyone's moving here! It's horrible!" One person said to me after the screening today, "You wrote a movie about New York where everyone's connected, and everyone in New York is so disconnected." I was like, "Well, not in my New York." I've certainly had great connections with people. One of the things you realize is that people are just talking about themselves all the time. [Laughs] She was just revealing herself right there, and it had nothing to do with geography.

[Photo Credit: Matt Carr/Getty Images]

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