Jason Segel was "really unhappy" during the final seasons of 'How I Met Your Mother'.
Jason Segel 'really unhappy' during final seasons of How I Met Your Mother
The 43-year-old actor - who played Marshall Eriksen on the long-running CBS sitcom - revealed that despite his success in television and film, he felt that he had a lack of creative freedom.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Jason explained: "There was a period in my life and career around the last couple of years of 'How I Met Your Mother' where things were firing in both movies and TV, and everyone was telling me how well it was going. And I was really unhappy.
"I then had to grapple with why? What's off about this equation? I think the thing that I was confronted with is that it's really great to make the decision of 'f*** it, I do what I want,' but unfortunately there's a system of permission in place where people will go, 'We don’t give a s*** [what you want to do].' Like, 'Good for you, man.'"
Despite his success in both big and small screen comedy, Jason admitted he was insecure about his abilities and worried he could not do drama.
He said: "After 'How I Met Your Mother' ended, I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. I really wondered if I was actually good enough to do drama. I took a movie called 'The End of the Tour' to play David Foster Wallace. The degree of difficulty of it not looking like a 'Saturday Night Live' sketch, when you get the glasses and the bandanna and you’re saying the lines, felt so high."
"I also had no system of prep because you prep differently for comedy. There was a lot of improv in how we came up, and these were big chunks of dialogue. I literally just played in my head, ‘What would Edward Norton do?' I got a dialect coach and I did all these things that I heard you do if you’re a real actor. But man, I was scared."
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