'I failed to research her before pressing 'send',' the actor writes on Twitter, adding that his intention was purely trying to be funny.

• Jun 14, 2018

AceShowbiz - Neil Patrick Harris has apologised to actress Rachel Bloom after he failed to recognise her at the Tony Awards on Sunday night (June 10).

The "Gone Girl" actor was watching the ceremony at home with his young kids, when his son pointed out that the woman featured backstage was repeating herself.

"Who is the woman in the top hat backstage at @TheTonyAwards?," Harris wrote on Twitter. "Gideon remarked that she says 'like' and 'oh my god' a lot. I'm confused..."

Rachel responded to Harris, revealing she was a tad upset that Neil didn't recognise her, because they had met "numerous times", adding her husband was a writer on his sitcom "How I Met Your Mother".

"I'm a big fan of yours," she said. "We've met numerous times and my husband, Dan Gregor, wrote for 'How I Met Your Mother' for 5 years. Notably, he wrote the episode where your character finally meets his father."

Red-faced Harris then responded: "Indeed! Well said. Thanks for the reminder. How was backstage?"

On Wednesday, June 13, Bloom addressed the exchange in an interview with GQ magazine, revealing the situation has left her "devastated."

"It wasn't a joke," she said. "Basically... I saw that tweet. And I was kind of devastated. I was actually going to tweet, 'This makes me sad'."

Rachel also believes that if Neil was trying to make a joke, his massive social media following has distorted what he thinks is funny.

"He's not a writer, so his version of a Twitter joke is to just kind of... live-comment to Twitter followers with kind of random, unformed thoughts," she added. "And fame does that to you - where you think every kind of random, unformed thought is a gem, because you get 10,000 likes from it."

Neil is now trying to make amends with Rachel by apologising.

"Sincere apologies to @Racheldoesstuff for my Tony tweet," he writes. "I failed to research her before pressing 'send', and what I thought was a funny comment in our living room must have been far from funny to read, backstage, mid show. As a performer and a parent, I should have known better."

And Bloom has accepted his apology.

Hi, thank you for this! Apology accepted.

— Rachel Bloom (@Racheldoesstuff) June 13, 2018

"Hi, thank you for this!," she responds. "Apology accepted."