Neil Patrick Harris, editor in chief? Actor's 'Wondercade' newsletter becoming full-fledged website (exclusive)
The popular actor is also planning to launch a line of California rosé in partnership with Game Box Wines.
Neil Patrick Harris seems almost blissfully ignorant to the flourishing popularity of Wondercade, his "labor of love" weekly newsletter in which the actor recommends food, wine and lifestyle products, offers style, fitness and travel tips, interviews famous friends and co-stars, and, in characteristic NPH magic-loving fashion, ends every issue with a puzzle or riddle.
"It's weird because we come up with ideas and we do interviews, I edit it, and then it just goes," Harris tells Yahoo Entertainment during a recent Zoom interview. "I never know about it. I don’t know who's reading it. I don't know what their takeaway is. I don't know whether they are looking forward to it. I hope they are. I'm proud of it."
The beloved stage and screen star is clearly doing something right. Wondercade's subscription button has been getting smashed left and right. The Webby-nominated newsletter has racked up nearly 200,000 subscribers since launching in October 2021.
Its next logical progression, which Yahoo Entertainment can now exclusively announce: Wondercade has expanded to a full-fledged website, now live at Wondercade.com. "A carnival of comforts! A circus for the senses!" read the taglines.
"The website was always sort of the next level of wonder, assuming that we would get a subscriber base that warranted it," Harris explains. The interviews he does are abbreviated in the Wednesday newsletter, but can run full-length in blog form. He'll delve deeper into topics. And the content will be archived.
The How I Met Your Mother and Uncoupled actor will continue to do interviews (Keanu Reeves, Jimmy Kimmel, Chistina Hendricks, Cobie Smulders among them) while the site will also expand its collection of recipes from famous chefs (Bobby Flay, Roy Choi, Andrew Zimmern, Kristen Kish) — not to mention his Le Cordon Bleu-trained husband David Burtka and twins Gideon and Harper — and include ongoing recommendations from its famous webmaster, including exclusive product deals. Harris also teases hidden Easter eggs throughout the site that will take readers to hidden content.
"I've been pretty diligent on making sure that the things are authentic and legitimate, and actual entertaining things that I wanna actually talk about,” Harris says. "Not life-altering conversations. Mind you, in point of fact, they're more diversion conversations of like how to mix a better drink or where to go in Vegas to see cool stuff that's not plastered on a billboard."
Wondercade.com evolves the newsletter's evocative and artful yet simple aesthetic, which harkens back to the origins of its name. "Wondercade," Harris explains, is a hybrid of the words "wonder" and the "old-timey" circus term "cavalcade," which is the procession of animals and performers around the ring.
The expansion of Harris's Wondercade brand won't be limited to HTML.
In early May, Wondercade will release their first "IRL" product: a line of California rosé in partnership with Game Box Wines. That means, yes, again in NPHian/Wondercadian fashion, each wine box will come complete with puzzles, riddles and Easter eggs on its packaging.
"It's gonna be available in wine shops and liquor stores, which I love to explore, and now have even more reason to,” cracks Harris. "But I got to taste-test the wine, and it's really quite good. I don't like my rosés to be dark in color, like a light red. I like them to be very dry, a very nice light pink. And this was great. I loved it."
Between his newly acquired roles as editor in chief of the Wondercade newsletter and website, and creative director of his own wine line — not to mention being a devoted husband and father of two — it'd be reasonable to think we might see less of Harris doing what he’s best known for: acting.
But Harris remains as prolific as ever as performer, too. In the next few months alone, he'll join Broadway's Peter Pan Goes Wrong for a limited guest star run (marking the first time he and husband Burtka, who's leading a revival of God of Carnage, will be onstage at the same time), begin production on Season 2 of Netflix-to-Showtime's acclaimed rom-com series Uncoupled and appear in a 60th anniversary special of BBC's Doctor Who.
