How I Met Your Mother: Jason Segel improvised sitcom’s most heartbreaking moment

Executive producer described scene as ’shocking and painful’

Despite being a sitcom, How I Met Your Mother featured several emotional moments.

However, none came more effective than an episode in the long-running show’s sixth season, titled “Bad News", which first aired 10 years ago this week.

In this particular outing, Marshall (Jason Segel) learns that his father, Marvin Eriksen Sr (Bill Fagerbakke), has died of a heart attack.

In what is considered to be the comedy show’s most heartbreaking moment, Marshall’s wife Lily (Alyson Hannigan) is shown breaking the news to him.

What some fans might not know, though, is that Segel had no idea what was coming. 

He knew a plot twist would be revealed in the scene, but requested to be kept in the dark so as to maximise the effect of his reaction. 

All he knew was that the final word of dialogue Hannigan would say to him in the scene was “it”. 

The line, referring to his father, ended up being: “He didn’t make it.”

Segel’s response – “My dad’s dead? I’m not ready for this” – was completely improvised on the spot.

During the show’s tenure, executive producer Carter Bays told Entertainment Weekly it was “the hardest scene we’ve ever done” and said that he had to look away when Segel delivered that line.

“What Jason and Alyson were going through was so unbearably real,” he said, calling it “irrevocable, shocking, and painful”.