Jason Segel Reveals Why He Left Hollywood for a ‘Little Country Town’ After “How I Met Your Mother” Success

“I wasn’t doing a lot of personal check-ins,” the actor told ‘Today’ show host Hoda Kotb of the events that led him to move away from Los Angeles

<p>Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty</p> Jason Segel on the

Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty

Jason Segel on the 'Today' show

Jason Segel is getting candid about his decision to leave behind the bright lights of Hollywood for life in a small town.

During an appearance on the Today show on Wednesday, Oct. 16, the Shrinking star, 44, opened up to Hoda Kotb about choosing to move out of L.A. after How I Met Your Mother ended in 2014.

"You did something so interesting," Kotb says. "A lot of people would’ve just taken a big dive into Hollywood, but you did something else. You pulled up stakes and moved away from all that. Why’d you do that?”

“I was having a really roaring twenties,” Segel responds. “I had How I Met Your Mother and I was also writing a bunch of movies that were successful and doing well.”

Despite his success with the CBS sitcom and films like Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), Segel says he wasn’t “doing a lot of personal check-ins because I was so busy.”

Related: Jason Segel Made Today's Hoda Kotb Cry On-Air with the Sweetest Compliment: Watch

He continues, “I realized that art is supposed to be a reflection of what you’re going through and I actually wasn’t going through much life-wise.”

Thus, he made the decision to change his environment in the hope that he might find more peace and fulfillment.

“So I moved out of LA,” he tells Kotb. “I moved to a little country town and I started to ask myself questions like, ‘What do you actually like? What are you actually thinking about right now? Who do you want to be as a performer and an artist?’

Related: Shrinking: Jason Segel Abandons 'Workday Dad' Duties to Become 'Nighttime Daddy' in Honest Talk with Daughter in Sneak Peek (Exclusive)

<p>Jon Kopaloff/WireImage</p> Jason Segel at the Golden Globe Awards in January 2024

Jon Kopaloff/WireImage

Jason Segel at the Golden Globe Awards in January 2024

Segel previously shared that he had moved to the town of Ojai, Calif. in a June 2023 interview with the Los Angeles Times. He spoke about the sense of “calm” he feels in the small town in Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles, where he now lives in a stone house nestled in the middle of an orange grove.

He first explored the area while trying to “get out of his head” in preparation for his 2015 film The End of the Tour.

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<p>Kristin Baalman/Getty</p> Ojai Valley in California

Kristin Baalman/Getty

Ojai Valley in California

“Being there had the really interesting side-effect of realizing — after six weeks time, mind you — that, ‘Oh, my gosh. I finally feel calm,’” Segel told the outlet. “And it occurred to me that when you’re doing this job and living in L.A., you’re never leaving campus.”

He continued, “So it was like this whole new experience to realize that when someone outside of Hollywood asks, ‘What are you up to?’ they mean, like, right now. So the answer is: ‘Oh. I’m on my way to the grocery store,’ not ‘I have three projects in development.’”

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