Part of How I Met Your Mother featuring Josh Radnor, Neil Patrick Harris, Alyson Hannigan, Cobie Smulders, and Cristin Milioti.
Rise to Fame
The career move that made him wasn't a role someone offered him. He wrote Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) during a hiatus from How I Met Your Mother, built around his own breakup, starring himself, featuring a Dracula puppet musical. Judd Apatow produced. It worked. The Muppets (2011) came next, another script he co-wrote, which revived a franchise Disney had let go dormant. Two swings, two hits.
In the Spotlight
Post-HIMYM, he co-created Shrinking with Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein. The show pairs him with Harrison Ford in one of Ford's first major TV comedy roles, and the formula clicked. Season 1 earned Segel an Emmy nomination for lead actor in a comedy. The third season launched in January 2026 and was renewed for a fourth before it finished airing. He stopped waiting for roles and started building them.
Side Notes
The Muppets credit is weirder than it looks. Segel didn't just write and star in the 2011 revival, he puppeteered Dr. Teeth and Beaker in the film's crowded car scenes himself. The production gave him a Muppet version of himself when it wrapped. He's said he was unhappy during HIMYM's peak despite the show's success, and the sitcom schedule made the film work he cared about nearly impossible to sustain.