To cap off 2014, I'm talking with the women—behind the scenes and in front of the camera—who cracked us up, infuriated us, and generally drove the most passionate conversations we had about TV this year. Where else could we start but with How I Met Your Mother? We swooned and swore during its final days and beyond—it's been off the air since March, and we still talk about it all the time. Who better to take our emotions out on talk to than Pam Fryman? She served as executive producer on HIMYM and directed a whopping 196 of the show's 208 episodes. (Basically, if Cristin Milioti is the Mother, Fryman is the Godmother.) Not only is she a no-B.S. source of inspiration for career girls everywhere (see her invaluable advice below), she's willing to get real about the Mother, her death, and what happened to that spin-off. I chatted with Pam by phone as she headed to the set of CBS's The McCarthys,' her latest project.
How did you get into the business?
The week I turned 21, after I graduated school, I took a cross-country trip with my brother from the East Coast, where I'm from, to California. I had no intention of staying in L.A., but I went to visit a friend who worked at NBC and ended up getting offered an assistant job there. The worst part was telling my parents, who thought I'd be home in two weeks. To this day my mom continues to say, "Is camp over yet?" And I say, "Soon!" That was 1980.I can't even guess at how you become a TV director. What did your climb up the ladder look like?
I worked my way up on soaps until I was directing those, and then I started getting into sitcoms. I was working on a show called Muddling Through—Jennifer Aniston played the daughter—when I got a call to do an episode of a new show called Friends, which she was also on, in second position to Muddling Through. I can still remember us walking around on the lot and her saying, "God, I hope Muddling Through gets canceled because Friends is so fun." Friends became a huge hit, and it was ultimately my golden ticket after years of working my way up from assistant to production assistant to assistant director. I always tell my daughters, who are entering the workforce now: Don't always be looking forward to the next thing. Embrace the job that you have right now and give it your all.
Turning to How I Met Your Mother: This was a show we adored for years. Its series finale, which you directed, will go down as one of the most controversial ever. Having been with the show from the beginning, when did you learn that the Mother was going to die in the end?
It wasn't when we were talking about the pilot, but it was early on. We knew by the beginning of season two, when we got the kids and shot a tremendous amount of footage with them for the end. We wanted them to still look young if we lasted another three years—we never imagined we'd be going nine years.
What did you think of the ending, personally?
I was proud of the guys for sticking with their vision. We all know that in life, things don't always go as planned. Rotten things happen. I think that's an OK story to tell, especially on this show. We had Robin not being able to have kids, Marshall losing his father—plenty of moments where our characters got sucker-punched just as people do in real life.
__The audience definitely felt sucker-punched. I actually liked the ending, but I learned very quickly the next morning that I was in the minority. Why do you think there was such a big backlash? __
One: We had cast Cristin, and the world fell in love with her. We didn't realize that was going to happen. Two: What most people don't know is that we had to cut a good 20 minutes from the final episode. I would bet that if we had been able to air that final hour in its entirety, we wouldn't have had [as negative a reaction]. It ended up moving at a breakneck speed, and I think the audience felt like, "What just happened?" It was going to be polarizing no matter what, but I think people would have found the full version more palatable.
What sort of stuff got left on the cutting-room floor?
We had a long scene in a coffee shop with Ted and Robin. We had the Mother's funeral. Little things. Look, I didn't want her to die, either—I was more in love with her than anyone else. But I didn't feel that we had made some horrible mistake. We just touched a nerve.
The next swerve in this emotional roller coaster: CBS planned a spin-off of HIMYM called How I Met Your Dad, which was supposed to essentially have a female Ted Mosby and a new gang. But the network ultimately decided not to move forward. What happened there?
I was involved with How I Met Your Dad in the early stages and then, unfortunately, my mom got sick. She's doing well now, but I was with her and didn't end up working on it. As for why the show wasn't picked up: It just wasn't quite right. They didn't get it quite right, and they knew it. With How I Met Your Mother being an incredible success, you never want to put something out there that's less than what that was.
It certainly would have been hard to top the magic. When you look back at those final days, what will you always remember?
On the last day of production, we shot the train sequence with the Mother and Ted on the platform. It was pouring on the stage—it was so ridiculously emotional. When it was over, it was so hard for me to yell "cut." I didn't want to cut. When I finally did, Josh and Cristin closed the yellow umbrella, walked over, and handed it to me. It's hanging in my house on a hook now. It just looks like an umbrella to everyone else. But it's everything to me.
