The pilot episode of HIMYM connections like the old apartment, it won’t be until later that Leighton Meester’s recurring character is featured prominently.
How I Met Your Father’s series follows the same setup as its predecessor, How I Met Your Father’s main characters, Leighton Meester won’t be the last big cameo for the series.
Leighton Meester cameoed in How I Met Your Father episode 1 as Meredith, Jesse’s ex-girlfriend who rejected his proposal on video, thus labeling him as the viral “Mr. Proposal Fail.” Since the viral video played on How I Met Your Father hardly showed Meredith’s face, it’s not surprising that Meester was hard to recognize. Even with a cameo that lasted less than five seconds, How I Met Your Father has already given plenty of information about Meester’s character. Jesse revealed that after Meredith rejected his proposal (leading him to vow to never get married), she took his cat, Girl, and went on to have an extremely successful music career, where she’s now working on her solo album in Europe. She’s no Robin Sparkles from HIMYM, but her notoriety in music suggests she'll return to New York City and confront Jesse about their past relationship.
How I Met Your Father’s cameo of Gossip Girl’s Blair actress is also perfect considering Meester is a musician herself, having charted on the Billboard 100 Top 10 with her feature in Cobra Starship’s single “Good Girls Go Bad.” As a popular actress-musician, she’ll perfectly contrast Jesse’s struggling music teacher and Uber-driver career back in NYC. Meester’s appearance on How I Met Your Father also isn’t a one-off bit, as Meredith has been revealed as a recurring role for the first season. This means that Leighton Meester is confirmed to return in How I Met Your Father for several episodes, hopefully as an even more important character down the road.
While Meester’s How I Met Your Father casting may seem random, she actually has a close connection to actors from the original series, How I Met Your Mother. Leighton Meester most recently starred on the series Single Parents opposite Taran Killam, who portrayed recurring character Gary Blauman on How I Met Your Mother and is also the real-life husband of Cobie Smulders, who portrayed one of HIMYM’s main characters, Robin Scherbatsky. Leighton Meester and How I Met Your Father star Hillary Duff also had a notable arc together in Gossip Girl season 3, where Duff’s movie-star character Olivia Burke was an NYU classmate of Meester’s Blair Waldorf. Hopefully reuniting the iconic 2000s teen-era actresses on screen, How I Met Your Father may even feature Leighton Meester and Hillary Duff’s characters as romantic rivals for Jesse.