David Henrie Recalls How I Met Your Mother Fans Tried to Bribe Him with Drinks Over Ending, but He Signed an Iron-Clad NDA

Back in the early 2010s, you could not have bribed David Henrie to tell you how How I Met Your Mother would end — certainly not with free drinks — thanks to the nondisclosure agreement he signed during the hit show’s second season.

“I remember, like, season 6 or 7 or whatever — by then I’d turned 21 and I would go to a bar and people would be like, ‘We’ve heard you know the ending!’ ” the actor recalled on a recent episode of The George Janko Show podcast. “And they’d be sending me drinks to try get it out of me.”  

While fans of the CBS sitcom had to wait nine seasons to learn who the show’s titular mother was, Henrie says the show’s creators, Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, were forced to reveal details about their plans for the inevitable finale to him and co-star Lyndsy Fonseca during the season 2.

The two young actors appeared as the teenage children of Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor in the show’s present day) listening in 2030 to their father (voiced by an unseen Bob Saget) tell the story of how he met their mom.

Henrie, who was just 16 when the show premiered, explained that as How I Met Your Mother took off during its second season, producers decided to film stock footage of him and Fonseca for “like 90 episodes” well in advance to ensure that his appearance in later seasons matched earlier episodes since all of his scenes across the show’s nearly nine years took place on the same day.

“They were like, ‘We gotta [film] this kid out, as soon as humanly possible,” Henrie told hosts Janko and Shawna Della-Ricca on their podcast. “We gotta shoot as many episodes as we can.’ ”

That also involved filming what he described as “What if…” scenes, including some for a potential finale.

“We were on set and the two showrunners came in, the guys who created the show, and they go, ‘Everyone out! Everyone out!’” Henrie recalled. “They left the cameras rolling. They brought in NDAs, and me and Lyndsy signed the NDAs. And we’re like, ‘What’s happening?’”

“And they go, ‘Okay, we’re gonna tell you what we think the end of the show is.’” he continued. “This is what they thought the ending was back then. So they go, ‘We don’t know, we’re in season 2, but we gotta get back to Robin somehow.’”

Spoiler alert for anyone currently binging How I Met Your Mother for the first time, but fans will remember that Robin (Cobie Smulders) was not, in fact, revealed to be the mother on the show. The series did, however, end with Ted reconnecting with Robin in 2030.

Henrie told Janko and Della-Ricca that he managed to keep his lips sealed for nearly eight years — despite all those free cocktails.

“I didn’t tell anybody until the end of the show. I didn’t tell a single person — what I was told, at least,” he said, noting that he wasn’t trying to get sued over the NDA he signed.