Neil Patrick Harris is on the cover of the upcoming issue of Out magazine, and sounds a bit more like he’s considering marriage to his boyfriend of four years, actor David Burtka. Harris had previously given some rather contradictory statements about any impending marriage, but now it sounds like he’s getting closer to saying that matrimony is in the works.

Neil Patrick Harris is opening up about making his relationship official with longtime beau David Burtka. “I think if and when we do, we’d probably announce it after the fact as opposed to making any big announcement,” Harris, 35, says in the September issue of Out magazine.

“We both wear rings, and I’m giddy when I see all the pictures of people so happy standing there, confirming the love they wish they could have expressed for a long time,” he explains. “I’m a big proponent of monogamous relationships regardless of sexuality, and I’m proud of how the nation is steering toward that,” he adds.

Harris said being outed by the media in November 2006 “was tricky. Part of the coming-out process is figuring out who you like and what that means, and how to act on it,” he explains. “Being an actor reduced my level of anonymity. I couldn’t just go to some bar and walk in and ask someone out on a date,” he adds. “If I had any regret it would be that strange lack of anonymity that created panic within myself that I would be found out.”

[From Us Weekly]

Neil also says his secret celebrity crush is Anderson Cooper. I love it when my gay crush has a crush on my other gay crush. Such drama. Harris has done a good job of not being typecast. He’s successfully played a major womanizer on How I Met Your Mother for several seasons, and his coming out didn’t affect the show’s viewership. As Out points out, it wasn’t much of a big deal with Harris released a statement a few years ago. It sounds like he’s pretty happy with his life and his relationship, and quite possibly getting married in the near future.

Here’s Neil Patrick Harris at the Emmy Awards nominee announcements on July 17th. Images thanks to PR Photos.

I have to admit, I have a big secret (until now) crush on Neil Patrick Harris. If there were any man I could turn from gay to straight (and then make him fall in love with me, which would be a part of this magic wish) it’d be Neil. Or maybe Anderson Cooper. But probably Neil. But since he doesn’t check in with me to verify MY needs, he remains gay. Which I guess I have to live with. But my crush remains.

Neil has said that while he’s happy about California’s gay marriage law, he’s not sure if he’ll be taking the plunge anytime soon

While Ellen DeGeneres and her girlfriend Portia De Rossi are making wedding plans, another famous out of the closet star, Neil Patrick Harris, is on the fence about tying the knot himself.

When it comes to gay marriage in California, Neil told OK!, “Oh I’m all for it! Big fan!” But when asked if he saw himself as a married man, he said, “I don’t know. If I did, no one would know about it ’til after I got married.”

Hmm, is that a hint? Neil, 35, has been in a long term relationship with Broadway actor David Burtka,33. In 2006, the How I Met Your Mother star told fans, “I am quite proud to say that I am a very content gay man living my life to the fullest.”

Neil has also told OK! that he’d love to have children one day. “I think I’d make a good dad,” he recently said. So, maybe there will be kids in the near future for Neil but as of now there will be no wedding bells… yet!

[From OK! Magazine]

It took all of my restraint not to offer to carry Neil Patrick Harris’ child after that last sentence. But I am totally calm now. Jokes aside, Neil and David are super cute together. They’ve been together since 2004, and according to Wikipedia, Neil “refers to Burtka as ‘My better half’ and an ‘amazing chef.’” Aww. Something tells me they’ll end up taking the plunge too… albeit in secret, as mentioned.

Here’s Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka outside MTV TRL Studios in Times Square on April 21st. Header of Neal and David participating in Broadway Backwards 3, a benefit for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in New York on February 4th. Images thanks to WENN.

I really don’t want to lay into Britney Spears. I feel like there is this unacknowledged agreement in the media that we all treat her with kid gloves right now, because she’s not falling apart as badly as she was. In fact you could almost say that she’s pulling her life together. And I am nothing if not a big supporter of the underdog. I love hearing about the girl with the drug problem who ended up going to Yale. And for Britney Spears, getting to be on How I Met Your Mother TWICE is pretty much her equivalent. However to be honest, I think she got into college because of her money or her name, or maybe slept with the dean or something. Because she was not competing with the rest of the students.

Though Brit seemed to get some decent reviews for her first performance, I thought she ranged from stilted and awkward to cheesy and overdone. This time around more reviewers seemed to be honest about her performance - it was sub par at best. the writers gave her a few more lines and made her more integral to the story – definitely a big mistake. To be fair to Britney, How I Met Your Mother seems to be suffering from some strike-induced stress, because it hasn’t been quite up to par lately. If you just started watching it for the first time because of Britney, it’d be fair to think it was mediocre at best. But it actually is one of only three great sitcoms left on the air in this pathetic age of reality crapivision. The other two being the illustrious Office and 30 Rock.

Bringing Britney back onto the show reeked of a desperation that How I Met Your Mother should not have bowed to. They clearly shoehorned her in at the last minute. Several reviews noted that she and Neil Patrick Harris had absolutely no chemistry. Harris told the Associated Press that the show shouldn’t employ Britney again, and should steer away from Will & Grace-esq stunt casting. Even though he later retracted his comments (in a manner you could tell was forced), I’m sure it made things awkward between him and Britney – and the result was flat, even in Harris’ usually brilliant performance.

Overall it led to a lackluster night. Britney should stick to what she used to be good at – performing songs. She clearly knew how to put on a great show, and that’s where her fans probably want to see her. While it’s nice to try to stretch your wings a little, acting is not her forte. My cat and I gave a more convincing performance of infatuation last night when we wrestled over the last bit of a ham sandwich. Brit, we’re routing for you. Keep up the good work, do great things from here on out – just stay away from television.

Here are some clips from Brit’s performance last night.

Britney Spears is back for a second time on the CBS show How I Met Your Mother. Her first appearance on March 24 in a cameo as the secretary to a dermatologist earned the show its highest ratings ever, so it makes sense that they would ask her back. Her episode will air Monday May 12.

Neil Patrick Harris, who plays Barney on the show, hinted at a potential conflict on set about whether to bring Britney on again. He said in April that “I’m in the minority that our show does not need stunt casting in order to succeed… I just am a real fan of our content. I think we have a great show going, and I hope it’s not screwed up by the desire for 700,000 more viewers.” He later clarified and retracted that statement, most likely after a tense conversation with his employers:

Britney did a great job on the show. She really did. In fact, we are all hoping that she returns rather soon to reprise her role as Abby. Look, that episode garnered our highest ratings of the season — I would never ignore or disrespect that fact. I am just very protective of our show, and its content. I have a high standard of quality, and hope to maintain it on every level. Television is big business, I understand that. I have great faith in our casting department, as well as [Twentieth Century Fox Television] and CBS, to find the appropriate person for every role on our show. I was remiss in speculating otherwise. My job description is to act, and I should really do just that. Britney Spears fits into our make-believe world very well — if she chose to return I can only imagine that Carter [Bays], Craig [Thomas], and the rest of the writers would create a humdinger of a storyline for her. We should be so lucky.

[via Hecklerspray]

Someone got in trouble with some bigwigs at CBS for speaking his mind. The Associated Press originally stood by their article and said “Harris told us unequivocally that he did not believe that Britney should be on the show,” but then they issued a “clarification” and said “Harris did not say that he opposed a return engagement for Spears, and our lead said that he did.”

Either way, Britney is back and looking normal. She’s an adequate comedy actress and it’s not bad stunt casting. In his original anti-stunt casting statement, Harris said “I worry that if they start `Will and Grace-ing’ us too much, that the show will suffer.” Or maybe it will get more attention than it ever has, but all attention is not necessarily good as Harris is likely to argue, especially when Britney is involved.

Even though Britney Spear’s much hyped, underwhelming and overrated cameo appearance on the CBS sitcom “How I Met Your Mother” gave the show its best ratings ever, putting it into the Nielsen Top 20 that week, one of the show’s stars says he could do without another appearance from the former pop star.

Britney Spears is popwrecka non grata on the CBS sitcom she just cameo’d on – at least according to one of its stars.

Neil Patrick Harris doesn’t want Spears back on “How I Met Your Mother” – nothing personal, he just doesn’t think they need recovering celebuwackos on the show for cheap ratings’ boosts. “I’m in the minority that our show does not need stunt casting in order to succeed,” says Harris.

There were rumors that Spears might make another appearance on the show after her first one. Nothing’s been set – yet.

[From TMZ]

I gotta give it to Harris- the guy always says exactly what is on his mind. Maybe it was all those years of being a child star and having handlers telling him what to say- just like a certain former pop star. While everyone else on the show has been praising Spears and saying that she is welcome to return, Harris has been the lone dissenter. As for the stunt casting debate, it would be great if shows could survive without them, but if the cameo is written well, it can be quite a boost. Cases in point: Kathleen Turner as Chandler’s transgendered dad on “Friends,” and who could forget the hilarious “Seinfeld” episode with baseball great Keith Hernandez?

Britney is shown out shopping on 4/9/08. Her boys, Sean Preston and Jayden, are shown going to the zoo with their nanny on 4/8/08. Neither K-Fed or Britney was there. Thanks to Splash News for these photos. Neil Patrick Harris is shown at the Primetime Emmy Awards on 9/16/07, thanks to PRPhotos.

“How I Met Your Mother” star Neil Patrick Harris has addressed the fact that Britney is going to have an upcoming guest role on his show. He told ET that he was “shocked that Madame Spears (emphasis on the Madame) was willing to come and do some acting. She hasn’t acted in a while.”

ET has a partial transcript of Harris’ comments on their website, and he made some jokes about Britney, saying her role will be “unlike any Britney we have seen before, and we have seen a lot of Britney recently.”

One thing they forgot to put into their post about the video interview available on their website, is that Harris specifically mentioned Osama Lutfi when interviewer Kevin Frazier asked him if he was worried about the crush of paparazzi that follows Britney wherever she goes:

Have you gotten ready for the paparazzi onslaught that’s gonna happen obviously every day now?
We thankfully don’t film on location, so I don’t think we’re going to be dealing with lots of paparazzi people at the Fox lot, but here’s hoping that Osama Lutfi guy doesn’t come and cause a stir.
So you’re hoping that she doesn’t bring the posse. Just Britney, no posse.
What if she shows up on set and she is absolutely, totally normal and that whole thing has been a big ruse?
Would that freak you out?
Would that freak you out?
Well, of course it would freak me out.
She’s smoking a cigarette, “Oh yeah, it’s all a big bit. I’ve got a master plan.”

[Transcribed from video available on ETOnline.com]

Harris is too awesome. You can tell that he follows Britney news like the rest of us, and that he’s taking the fact that she’s going to temporarily invade his workplace in stride. It all seems a bit amusing to him, like he’ll get to see for himself what Britney is really like behind all the hype.

In related Britney news, she’s been given an allowance of $1,500 a week on a debit card by order of the Commissioner presiding over her conservatorship case.

Lawyers for Britney are also arguing against the over $400,000 in legal fees that she is obligated to pay K-Fed’s attorneys for representing him in their ongoing custody battle. Britney’s lawyers argue that Kevin’s lawyers spent too much time on the case, calling multiple hearings and bringing too many people to court in order to take advantage of the fact that Britney was paying the bills. Kevin’s lawyers say that it’s not a typical case and takes a lot of time and people to work on it. The judge is now considering whether Kevin should foot part of his legal bill.

Britney stepped out last night for dinner, and was seen with new lighter-colored hair withhighlights. She looked incredibly good. I wonder if her new hair is to prepare for her upcoming television role. Thanks to WENN for these pictures.

Perez Hilton has one less reason to blog furiously in a misguided attempt to out every semi-closeted Hollywood star. Right after Perez scrawled over some pictures of Harris with a hot guy that is claimed to be his long term boyfriend, Harris came out to People magazine. This is in spite of a statement by Harris’ PR person at the beginning of this month that he’s “not of that persuasion.”

While I agree that Evangelical Christians preaching against the “evils” of a “homosexual lifestyle” should be outed, and politicians who do their best to make sure that gay people are denied basic rights should be outed, I’m not sure it’s my business which of the people who entertain me are gay. I mean, I’m kind of naive about this because I don’t think it’s a big deal, but isn’t it someone’s human right to decide if they’re going to come out or not? It seems nasty to call people gay and out them unwillingly. It’s not an easy to decision to come out and many people are still homophobic and ignorant about it. If someone is not ready, why jeopardize their career? OTOH, if more people come out then it won’t be as big of a deal to be a public gay person. It’s just everyone’s right to decide when they’re going to say something about it.

Good for Harris for stepping up to the plate and clearing up the rumors.

The public eye has always been kind to me, and until recently I have been able to live a pretty normal life. Now it seems there is speculation and interest in my private life and relationships.

“So, rather than ignore those who choose to publish their opinions without actually talking to me, I am happy to dispel any rumors or misconceptions and am quite proud to say that I am a very content gay man living my life to the fullest and feel most fortunate to be working with wonderful people in the business I love.”