Jason Segel Promises Four More Years of HIMYM

Jason Segel has emerged as the biggest star in the cast of How I Met Your Mother, thanks to his Judd Apatow connections and ability to open big-ish movies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall. But HIMYM fans worried that he might give up playing Marshall for the glory of the movies can breathe a sigh of relief. Segel says he's not going anywhere anytime soon. At last weekend's junket for I Love You Man, I asked him not to leave the show despite the flurry of movie projects he has coming up. "I won't, I won't," he assured me. "I think I'll be there for four more years, then I'm going to cut myself loose."

He then added a touch that seemed very Marshall Ericksen to me, and also incredibly endearing for an admitted Segel fan like myself. "Four more years seems fair, right?" As if my fannish opinion actually mattered to someone weighing the merits of TV and movie stardom.

There's no guarantee that HIMYM will be given four more seasons, even though the next one is certain. But four more years seems like a good run for the series as a whole, and not just a moment for Segel to bail while leaving the rest of the series in limbo. Sounds like and the whole cast might have agreed that four more is the limit, and if we get lucky and CBS is kind, we'll have four more seasons of this show to enjoy.