Mandy Moore Was in How I Met Your Mother, and You Have Completely Missed It
Every pop star has a dark side.
Being recognized as a huge music star now, Mandy Moore rose to fame with her debut single Candy (2000) and starring in the tear-jerking drama A Walk to Remember (2002).
Although the singer’s name is quite synonymous to pop, she has made a number of far cries from that image. These include her brief cameo on one of the most iconic sitcoms of the 21st century, CBS’ How I Met Your Mother.
HIMYM Broke Mandy Moore’s Girl-Next-Door Image
Even if you’re a die-hard fan of the show, you may have overlooked that there even was a cameo of Mandy Moore. The actress looks absolutely different here, and the character she’s playing is nothing like Jamie from her breakout movie.
The truth is that she appears in the first episode of HIMYM’s third season, titled Wait For It, and portrays the first girl Ted (played by Josh Radnor) meets after the painful breakup with Robin.
Barney persuades Ted to ‘win the breakup’ by hooking up with a girl, so Radnor’s hopeless romantic gets acquainted with Moore’s rebellious girl Amy, with whom he spends the night stealing liquor, getting tattoos and breaking into a family’s hot tub.
Moore had already played a bag girl before, if we take her appearance in Anne Hathaway ’s The Princess Diaries (2001) into account, however, since then she has become a kind of predictable ‘good girl’ for the mass audience.
It is the very reason why the minor role in HIMYM was in fact necessary, as it gave us another vision of Moore and rekindled people’s interest in her personality.
Mandy Moore’s TV Career After HIMYM
It may come as a surprise, but the darker aspects of Mandy Moore's cameo in HIMYM did come back, when she starred in NBC’s hit drama This Is Us (2016 - 2022) that marked her roaring return to TV.
The actress was so convincing while displaying the complexities and nuances of her character, Rebecca Pearson, that no girl-next-door could ever do it like that.
So if you want to revise Moore’s short-lived appearance on How I Met Your Mother and see just how badass she was, you can stream the show on Netflix .