Lending an unexpected art-house aura to a spinoff of a CBS sitcom, Greta Gerwig has signed on to star in the How I Met Your Mother offshoot, How I Met Your Dad. We already knew the series would be a spinoff in name and concept only, borrowing HIMYM’s flashback structure and applying it to a new set of characters, whose tangential lives prolong one woman’s story of how she met your dad. (“Father” is far too formal; we don’t stand on ceremony here in this house of soliloquies.)
Now we know that Gerwig will be that woman, “Sally,” who’s described as being “a female Peter Pan who has never grown up and has no idea of where she's going in life”—but could just as easily be described as “a Greta Gerwig character,” seeing as that also applies to just about everything she’s ever starred in. The show picks up as Sally is just starting to realize her husband of one year isn’t your dad, and so she turns to her circle of friends to begin the ensuing near-decade of talking about who might be.
Not only is Gerwig starring in the series, she’s also signed on to write as well as produce, alongside Up All Night’s Emily Spivey and HIMYM’s Carter Bays and Craig Thomas—meaning fans of Frances Ha et al. now have an unexpected reason to check this out. Plus, the addition of one of the most famous faces of the “mumblecore” movement should be exciting for those who always thought How I Met Your Mother’s narration could stand to be a little less articulate.