What has actor Jason Segel done since he played Marshall Eriksen on How I Met Your Mother? Segel portrayed the character for all nine seasons of the CBS sitcom until it came to an end in 2014. Following the show's conclusion, Segel shifted his focus to film but will soon be returning to TV. Segel started acting when he was 18 years old and his claim to fame came the following year with his role as Nick Andopolis in Freaks and Geeks. The series was short-lived, but it led to Segel's part in Judd Apatow's Undeclared. Segel then spent the next few years with minor roles on shows like CSI and Alias before he was cast as Marshall in How I Met Your Mother.
Segel played one of the How I Met Your Mother lead characters for almost a decade, but that didn't prevent the actor from exploring work in film. Over those nine years on the sitcom, Segel appeared in over a dozen movies. Many of those films were from Apatow including Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek, The Five-Year Engagement, and This Is 40. Segel also appeared in a number of other popular movies during that time, such as I Love You, Man, Despicable Me, Bad Teacher, The Muppets, and This Is the End. How I Met Your Mother was tasked with negotiating Segel's return for the final season as the actor wanted to focus on film.
Following the official end of the sitcom, the writer and actor continued to work on diverse film projects. In 2015, Segel portrayed novelist David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour. The performance garnered Segel a number of award nominations. He then appeared in the Netflix sci-fi, The Discovery, alongside Rooney Mara, Jesse Plemons, Riley Keough, and Robert Redford. Segel appeared in another Netflix film, Come Sunday, in 2018.
Segel's most recent movie, The Friend, made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2019. The drama, directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, follows a married couple (Casey Affleck and Dakota Johnson) who are faced with the wife's impending death, so they invite their best friend, played by Segel, to move in and help the family.
Next up, the How I Met Your Mother star will make his return to TV with the AMC anthology series Dispatches from Elsewhere. The series, set to air in 2020, will not only feature Segel as the lead actor, but he also created the show. Dispatches from Elsewhere will follow on a group of normal people who discover a puzzle hidden under the veil of everyday life. The show's first season will also feature Sally Field, Andre Benjamin, Eve Lindley, and Richard E. Grant.