Neil Patrick Harris Disses Britney Spears

James Joyner @ Gone Hollywood | Thursday, April 10, 2008

Doogie Houser doesn’t want Britney Spears screwing up his show, even if it means doubling the ratings.

Neil Patrick Harris Disses Britney Spears

If Neil Patrick Harris had his way, Britney Spears would be banned from the set of “How I Met Your Mother.” Nothing against the pop singer personally — he just doesn’t think the show should bring guests aboard for a ratings boost alone.

“I’m in the minority that our show does not need stunt casting in order to succeed,” Harris declared during a break from taping the Monday night CBS sitcom, which has grown a cult following since its 2005 debut. “I worry that if they start `Will and Grace’-ing us too much, that the show will suffer. And we’re all really proud of the content of the show. I mean, viewership is not our game. It’s the network and the studio’s game, you know. It’s the promotion department’s game,” the actor, who plays womanizer Barney, told The Associated Press in an interview last week.

Spears has been the most high-profile guest star to visit the set, following past appearances by Mandy Moore, Enrique Iglesias and Heidi Klum. But her capable March 24 cameo — feverishly promoted, anticipated, blogged-about, critiqued, analyzed and, ultimately, well-reviewed — gave Harris pause to voice a concern: Was the show selling out?

“We wish we weren’t opposite an awkward reality dancing competition,” he said. “But we have no say about that. I just am a real fan of our content. I think we have a great show going, and I hope it’s not screwed up by the desire for 700,000 more viewers.”

Make that 1 million more viewers for the Britney episode, which grabbed an audience of 10.6 million tuning in as Spears filled her small role as a bubbly receptionist. Among the 18-to-49-year-old demographic, it was the most-watched episode of the series ever.

Gone Hollywood doesn’t mind using Britney to boost its ratings. In fact, if she wants to come on as a guest poster, we’ll take her.

Elsewhere, he says she’s just not a good enough actress.

“She’s not an actress,” he said. “She played a role for a week, and did a really nice job, but the workload involved with doing memorization and the purging of comedy over and over is really, really hard. I mean, it takes a strong skill set to do that every week.”

An acting veteran who first gained fame as “Doogie Howser, M.D.” in his midteens, Harris believes that the cast of “HIMYM” has become a well-oiled machine over 60-plus episodes, and revisiting Spears’ receptionist/stalker would be a mistake. “You do it one week, it’s fine, but to do it a lot of weeks is hard,” he added. “She’s not going to be a regular on our show.”

As for his own personal memories of working with Brit, Harris said he was just happy the shoot kept her out of the paparazzi’s unblinking gaze for a while. “We kept the set closed to make her comfortable,” he remembered. “So I would probably keep [conversations we had] to myself. We wanted to make sure that she didn’t feel exploited from us personally. She’s exploited from everyone, all the time. We had some nice times, but they were our times.”

Here’s a video of Britney’s appearance on the show, so you can judge for yourself: