Neil Patrick Harris appears nearly blissfully ignorant to the flourishing reputation of Wondercade, his “labor of affection” weekly e-newsletter through which the actor recommends meals, wine and way of life merchandise, gives model, health and journey ideas, interviews well-known buddies and co-stars, and, in attribute NPH magic-loving vogue, ends each subject with a puzzle or riddle.
“It is bizarre as a result of we give you concepts and we do interviews, I edit it, after which it simply goes,” Harris tells Yahoo Leisure throughout a latest Zoom interview. “I by no means learn about it. I don’t know who’s studying it. I do not know what their takeaway is. I do not know whether or not they’re wanting ahead to it. I hope they’re. I am pleased with it.”
The beloved stage and display screen star is clearly doing one thing proper. Wondercade’s subscription button has been getting smashed left and proper. The Webby-nominated e-newsletter has racked up almost 200,000 subscribers since launching in October 2021.
Its subsequent logical development, which Yahoo Leisure can now solely announce: Wondercade has expanded to a full-fledged web site, now reside at Wondercade.com. “A carnival of comforts! A circus for the senses!” learn the taglines.
“The web site was all the time form of the subsequent degree of marvel, assuming that we might get a subscriber base that warranted it,” Harris explains. The interviews he does are abbreviated within the Wednesday e-newsletter, however can run full-length in weblog type. He’ll delve deeper into matters. And the content material shall be archived.
The How I Met Your Mom and Uncoupled actor will proceed to do interviews (Keanu Reeves, Jimmy Kimmel, Chistina Hendricks, Cobie Smulders amongst them) whereas the positioning may even broaden its assortment of recipes from well-known cooks (Bobby Flay, Roy Choi, Andrew Zimmern, Kristen Kish) — to not point out his Le Cordon Bleu-trained husband David Burtka and twins Gideon and Harper — and embrace ongoing suggestions from its well-known webmaster, together with unique product offers. Harris additionally teases hidden Easter Eggs all through the positioning that can take readers to hidden content material.
“I have been fairly diligent on ensuring that the issues are genuine and legit, and precise entertaining issues that I wanna truly discuss,” Harris says. “Not life-altering conversations. Thoughts you, truly, they’re extra diversion conversations of like find out how to combine a greater drink or the place to go in Vegas to see cool stuff that is not plastered on a billboard.”
Wondercade.com evolves the e-newsletter’s evocative and suave but easy aesthetic, which harkens again to the origins of its title. “Wondercade,” Harris explains, is a hybrid of the phrases “marvel” and the “old-timey” circus time period “cavalcade,” which is the procession of animals and performers across the ring.
The growth of Harris’s Wondercade model will not be restricted to HTML.
In early Might, Wondercade will launch their first “IRL” product: a line of California rosé in partnership with Recreation Field Wines. Meaning, sure, once more in NPHian/Wondercadian vogue, every wine field will come full with puzzles, riddles and Easter Eggs on its packaging.
“It is gonna be out there in wine retailers and liquor shops, which I like to discover, and now have much more cause to,” cracks Harris. “However I bought to taste-test the wine, and it is actually fairly good. I do not like my rosés to be darkish in colour, like a lightweight crimson. I like them to be very dry, a really good mild pink. And this was nice. I cherished it.”
Between his newly acquired roles as editor in chief of the Wondercade e-newsletter and web site, and artistic director of his personal wine line — to not point out being a loyal husband and father of two — it would be cheap to assume we’d see much less of Harris doing what he’s greatest recognized for: appearing.
However Harris stays as prolific as ever as performer, too. Within the subsequent few months alone, he’ll be a part of Broadway’s Peter Pan Goes Mistaken for a restricted visitor star run (marking the primary time he and husband David Burtka, who’s main a revival of God of Carnage, shall be onstage on the identical time), start manufacturing on Season 2 of Netflix-to-Showtime’s acclaimed rom-com sequence Uncoupled, and seem in a sixtieth anniversary particular of BBC’s Physician Who.
