How We Met John Cho | S3E06 "I'm Not That Guy"

“I look back and I thought I was an engineer. I thought I was trying to go places, but that’s not what was happening at all. Things were given to me, the opportunities showed up, and I did the best I could.” That is John Cho, reflecting on a career that began with a first pilot alongside Josh Radnor in 2001 and led him to guest-star in Season 3, Episode 6 of How I Met Your Mother, “I’m Not That Guy.” In this extended interview, Cho joins hosts Josh Radnor and Craig Thomas to discuss the episode, the craft of playing a charming corporate villain, and the unusual production philosophy that made the show a structural outlier in sitcom history.

The Shock of a Silent Studio

Cho arrived on the How I Met Your Mother set with a specific expectation. His prior sitcom experience had been on a multi-camera show with a live studio audience, and he had come to distrust the process. “I was thirsty for laughs from the studio audience,” he says, describing how the presence of a live crowd warps a performance. “It cranks you up. You’re trying to get laughter from people that they’re tossing candy to.” The absence of an audience on HIMYM was initially disorienting, but it quickly became a relief. Without the need to pause for laughs or re-tune jokes after a tepid third-take response, Cho found he could stay interior. “It’s so many years for me to be able to do comedy and be interior…