Neil Patrick Harris candidly tweeted on Friday that he was disappointed in actor Eric Braeden. His tweet read, “Eric Braeden is a D-Bag. the actor, (Robin’s dad) agreed to a cameo, then last night bailed, saying the part wasn’t ‘substantial’ enough.” NPH has now already apologized for his comment, saying, “Now I feel bad for the D-bag comment. Don’t know the guy personally. I’m just fiercely protective of our show.” As fans, so are we. So who IS Eric Braeden, and why would he flake so unprofessionally?

Eric Braeden (Young and the Restless) has played Robin’s Dad on the in the past, and was scheduled for another appearance on the show.  Ray Wise (Twin Peaks, Reaper) will be replacing Braeden.

Braden’s comments? He told Entertainment Weekly, “I really don’t know who that fellow is. He’s a guy who stars in that series. The choice of words bothered me. He seems to me like a young whippersnapper… who’s received a few awards [and] is now suffering from the first sign of hubris. I’ve been in the business for 50 years. I’ve seen people come and go and I’m still here.”

Braden is also known for pulling out of The Young and the Restless for contract disputes. For How I Met Your Mother, the actor cited his recent hip surgery as the reason for not doing the show. What’s curious is that he would have done it if the part had more work to it. He told Entertainment Weekly, “I’ve doubled my work, 30 to 50 pages a day for me, alone. Everyone knows that I’m exhausted. I was not about appear on a show for two lines, because that’s what it amounted to.”

Perhaps the decoder ring for the above comment is found in his telling quote to TV Guide, “…I have had a longstanding antipathy toward guest-starring on nighttime television because I’d done that an enormous amount in the ’60s and ’70s. I was infuriated by the singular decision by a former head of Universal Studios to lower guest-star salaries by 75 percent – from $7,500 per show to $2,500. At that time, Universal was the only game in town. So I swore I would not do that again — though I had probably done that more than any actor. Hence my decision to do daytime.” When asked if it’s gotten better to do guest work he replied, “No, it has not closed at all. The chasm between those who star in these things and those guest actors who make it all work as well has become bigger and bigger. But neither the actors nor the agents have the intestinal fortitude to say, ‘Up yours.’ It really has done enormous damage to the middle and upper-middle class of actors. No question about it.”

Perhaps the price wasn’t enough for Braeden.

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