Greta Gerwig won't know for another two weeks whether CBS is picking up her How I Met Your Mother spin-off, How I Met Your Dad, so she's feeing very, very anxious. But because she's Greta Gerwig — one of Hollywood's most wonderfully chatty stars — she stopped to talk to Cosmopolitan.com last night, anyway, at Chanel's annual Tribeca Film Festival Artists Dinner:

This is adorable, is it Chanel?
Yes, it's Chanel, why not?

Do you remember the first Chanel item you ever bought or acquired?
The first Chanel item I ever owned was ... I saved all my money and I bought this nail polish that was a Chanel nail polish and my mother was like, "You bought a gray nail polish for $18?" But it's the nicest gray nail polish ever. It's Chanel!

So did you use it or save it for a special occasion only to find it dried out?
No, no, no, I really used it. I thought it was very classy.

You've been on a lot of different sets and have worn so many cool costumes, do you ever keep anything?
I always keep one item. Something that's emblematic. One thing that I feel I want to carry with me.

Like what?
Like a hat or a jacket or a dress. Something that reminds me of the person.

Do you wear them?
No no, they go away. Like old love letters, no need to have them out.

Have you given any thought to how you want to dress your character in How I Met Your Dad?
Well, we're looking at it right now — in the pilot, I'm really into bright sitcom dressing. I was totally embracing it. Tight, I'm on a CBS show, let's brighten it up! It's awesome. So I went full-board cute with it, which I think is really fun. So lots of dresses. I wear a lot of dresses in life so I wanted the character to have a lot of dresses too.

So you're already thinking ahead to what you're going to keep!
Oh yeah, hopefully it's nine years and I have so many things to choose from.

Some people thought maybe you'd be going with a hipster style or something modern.
Oh no, it's going to be pretty cute.

Do you believe in fate — that's such a major theme of How I Met Your Mother, at least.
Yes, I do. I'm a big believer in fate.

How so? Was there something that stands out to you?
I don't know. I just believe in these coincidences meaning something. And I know mathematicians who are my friends keep telling me that doesn't mean anything and that the world is full of coincidences, but I tend to read a lot of meaning into them.

Wait, so you're hanging out with mathematicians on the regular?
Well, actually in my first apartment in New York I lived beneath a bunch of mathematicians. It was sort of like The Big Bang Theory.

Oh wow, life imitating art.
I was going to end up on a CBS sitcom, there was no question about it.

It's fate. Or they could have just done a reality TV show about your life with the mathematicians.
Yeah, really. So, yeah, I have a couple friends who are really good at math.

My mom's a math teacher.
Really?!

Yep — I think that skill skips a generation, though.
I'm terrible at it. I always pretended to be good at it because I thought really smart people were always good at math, so I would try to fake it and people would be like, "Why didn't you just tell me you didn't understand it?"

Well, how often are you even using what we learned in school in real life?
I've never used the quadratic equation and I spent so long learning it.

Now are you nervous about upfronts?
Yes. It's in two weeks. I have no idea whether or not our show is picked up. I'm so nervous. I'm still waiting to hear. I'm so excited about it. I really hope it happens.

Is it more exciting or more pressure because it's this iconic thing that just ended and you're stepping into it?
I would say it cuts both ways. On the one hand, it feels like I'm working with people whom I so utterly respect what they do and know that they created something really special. But on the other hand, I feel like I have all these fans I could let down! [Starts coughing.] Oh my god, I almost choked to death. This is how nervous I am!

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