Neil Patrick Harris on Slimming Down to Play Trans Rock Goddess Hedwig: ‘I’ll Be All Legs and Butt and Back’

If you thought host Neil Patrick Harris looked a little thinner at the Emmy Awards last night, you're right! The How I Met Your Mother star, who is gearing up to play a transgender glam rocker in Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway this spring, admits he’s losing weight to fit into Hedwig’s skimpy Sergio Valente ensembles. Harris told Vanity Fair he hopes his fans won’t be alarmed by his transformation from suit-clad Barney to a more feminine Hedwig.

“As Barney, I’m all shoulders and arms and chest, but as Hedwig I’ll be all legs and butt and back,” Harris explained. “Like Cyd Charisse.” In the 1998 musical by John Cameron Mitchell and Steven Trask, Hedwig describes herself as a perfect size six. (“I had no time to diet, so I had my heart removed,” she famously admits.) In Hedwig, the slimmed-down Harris will play the frontwoman of a rock band, who, between songs, regales her audience with stories of growing up in East Berlin, her love affair with “rock icon” Tommy Gnosis and her botched sex change operation.

We can’t wait to see NPH show off his legs in Hedwig, beginning March 29, 2014 at the Belasco Theatre!