Bryan Cranston is heading back to How I Met Your Mother during the CBS comedy’s final season. The man hasn’t been a part of the HIMYM family since 2007, when he popped up on the series as one of Ted Mosby’s coworkers and later one of his underlings. In Season 9, he’ll return to the series playing the infamous Hammond Druthers.
CBS pulled a Ryan Murphy and announced the casting news via Twitter on Wednesday, which means we don’t have a ton of details about Cranston’s return appearance. If Hammond Druthers runs into Ted Mosby, things could get pretty interesting, considering the two have a storied past. Druthers started out as Mosby’s boss on the series, but as Mosby continued an upward trajectory and Druthers' ideas wore thin, the two switched roles in the workplace. Mosby eventually even fired Druthers during Season 2 after the man continued to be an antagonistic force in the office. Luckily, Season 9 of How I Met Your Mother will be held over a wedding weekend, and while shenanigans should ensue, hopefully the celebratory nature of the event season should keep Druthers on his best behavior.
How I Met Your Mother actually premiered this week, so hopefully we won’t have too long to wait before the Breaking Bad actor pops up “later this fall” for his guest stint. The show is in the throes of filming its final season on CBS, and no doubt Druthers won’t be the only character from the comedy’s past to pop up and haunt HIMYM’s final episodes. As long as we eventually get the story of how Ted meets the mother, I’m all for random characters popping up in the final season.
For now, you can see Cranston over at AMC. The network is airing a Breaking Bad marathon this week before the concluding episode for the series hits the cable network this weekend. Most of the show’s big actors have already signed on for new projects. Dean Norris has Under the Dome, Betsy Brandt starts her gig on The Michael J. Fox Show on Thursday, and Anna Gunn is busy filming the Rita pilot for Bravo. While those guys are busy with new TV projects, Cranston is trying for the big leagues and has signed on for movie gigs, including a biopic about the blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.
No doubt Cranston will continue to be in demand after Breaking Bad ends, but it's nice that he isn’t too busy (or too aloof) to return to a goofy and sometimes nostalgic comedy like How I Met Your Mother, a show that offered him a gig back in the day when he was between TV roles.
You can check out new episodes of CBS’ HIMYM on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
