Despite the popularity of “How I Met Your Mother,” Jason Segel now admits that he was unsatisfied.

During a recent Hollywood Reporter comedy actors roundtable, Segel, who is currently starring in the Apple TV+ show “Shrinking,” admitted that despite parlaying the sitcom into roles in films such as “This Is 40,” “The Muppets,” and “Get Him To The Greek,” he was “really unhappy” toward the end of the show.

“There was a period in my life and career around the last couple years of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ where things were firing on both movies and TV and everyone was telling me how well it was going, and I was really unhappy,” Segel explained. “And so I had to think about why—what’s wrong with this equation?—because I should feel like I accomplished something.”

Finally, Segel said, he had to learn to find a balance between fighting for the freedom to make his own creative decisions and understanding when to let go.

“I think the thing that I was confronted with is that it’s really great to make the decision of, “F*ck it, I do what I want,’ but unfortunately there’s a permissions system in place where people will go, ‘We don’t give a shit [what you want to do],'” he told the magazine.

He used the well-known finale of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” as an example.

“I had to fight hard to put a Dracula puppet musical at the end of a movie,” he added, comparing his efforts to hauling a boulder up a hill over months or years.

“It’s difficult. Getting to the point where you question yourself, “What is worth trading my time for?” is part of the equation. “What am I willing to give up nine months or three years for?”

Segel was stunned when “How I Met Your Mother” ended after nine seasons in 2014. In May 2023, he characterized the sensation in Vanity Fair as an “existential crisis.”

“When How I Met Your Mother ended, I spent a long time, like five years, trying to figure out how to make my relationship work in a way that would be sustainable for me and interesting for me,” he explained to VF. “It can be an abusive relationship as well because when it loves you, it loves you so much that it feels exactly like love.” But then when it turns on you, it goes away for a while and then reappears, and I simply can’t stop you behaving, you know?”