Cobie Smulders is the kind of person you want around in an emergency - onscreen and off as it turns out.
Not only is she “a preparer” in real life who’s fully stocked on toilet paper during self-isolation (more on that later), but if her latest show Stumptown is anything to go by, Smulders is quick-thinking and can seriously kick some butt should the situation require it.
Stumptown, based on the comic book series of the same name by Greg Rucka, aired its 18-episode first season on ABC in the US last fall.
Marking its season finale in March, the crime-drama that covers everything from PTSD, bisexuality and caring for a sibling with Down syndrome (and that’s just Smulders’ character, Dex), comes to the UK this month.
As all in-person interviews are on pause, Smulders called me from her Los Angeles home, where she’s currently isolating with her husband, SNL alum Taran Killam (whose sitcom Single Parents aired each week directly before Smulders’ own show on ABC) and their two young daughters. Even over the phone, Smulders’ warmth shines through, as does her passion for her work and her self-deprecating sense of humor.
But playing Stumptown’s military veteran turned private investigator, Dex Parios, was a role that the 38-year-old never anticipated taking on.
Originally from Vancouver, Smulders got her start in modeling, where she’d traveled from Tokyo to Paris to New York City before the age of 20. With plans to study marine biology at university, Smulders discovered acting before she even made it on campus, and landed a career-making role as Robin Scherbatsky in the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother in 2005.
HIMYM spanned nine seasons, allowing the actress to create the kind of character that ensured a loyal fanbase. But Smulders also made sure it didn’t leave her stuck playing the same types of roles.
Earning a coveted spot in the Marvel Avengers series as Maria Hill and starring alongside Tom Cruise in the action-packed Jack Reacher, Smulders also took on roles in indie films before Stumptown brought her back to network television.
Along the way, Smulders has used her platform to advocate for organizations like Save the Children and Oceana, as well as causes like ovarian cancer, which Smulders is a survivor of.
Ahead, Smulders explains how her “epic failure” in modeling led her to acting, the quarantine activities that are keeping her sane and all the beyond-early morning workouts that went into being able to beat up the bad guys each week on Stumptown.
Stumptown is so different from television sitcoms where you had your initial break with HIMYM. What attracted you to the role?
“I didn’t anticipate really ever doing another TV show, certainly for a while. What happened was, I read the script and I read the comic books and I was like, ‘I have to play this character.’ I fell in love with Dex, and I was so excited to play her - to play a female detective, to play a bisexual woman on network television, to play a woman who is wounded psychotically but fighting through it. With shows, it’s always so funny because it’s like ‘Okay, we’ll shoot a pilot.’ Who knows? ‘Okay, we’ll shoot the first 13.’ Who knows? So it’s a little bit step-by-step.”
What kind of character research went into playing Dex?
“In terms of preparing to play someone who is struggling with PTSD, it was all about the way that Dex avoids it. And just personally, I feel like all of us have varying degrees of PTSD - we’re all going through s**t, we’re all dealing with something. So it was just sort of locking into that, locking into my personal life.
And then also, I’ve been lucky enough and honored to play women in the military before like in Jack Reacher. I’ve met these women, I’ve spoken to them, I’ve read a lot of books about firsthand accounts dealing with PTSD, so I’ve picked pieces from these women and from my own personal experiences and mixed them all together. I think when you’re playing somebody with an issue that the world is dealing with, it’s really important to play it with integrity. I respect men and women who enlist, I can’t imagine being in that position.”
It’s a very physical show...
“Yeah it is, girl. It’s certainly the most grueling role physically that I’ve ever taken on in terms of being in shape and being ready for it. There wasn’t a lot of time, it was just sort of finding these pockets between scenes or on lunch breaks to work through the fight sequence that was going to happen in two days.
I’m not one that just likes to work out. I really don’t enjoy it, it’s hard for me to do. But what I have learned about myself is that I need to do it or else I start spinning out. So I’ve trained myself to wake up before small children - which is in darkness before the sun - to do something. Especially with the show, I would try to get into work a little bit early and do a workout there literally around the soundstages just to keep up my cardio so I didn’t run out of breath."
Did any training you’d had for movies like the Avengers and Jack Reacher help you with Stumptown?
“Stumptown was more difficult because there’s no putting it away. I don’t do many stunts in Avengers because I’m human and they should be fighting. But in the Jack Reacher film, we trained for like three months for specific fight scenes. And then when those fight scenes were done - we were working out to be in shape - but when the fight scene is over and done with you’re not practicing the moves and it’s not as intense. But with the show, you know there’s another fight coming in the next episode so you have to maintain this level of fitness, which is exhausting.
Also, I have an amazing stunt double, Marie, which is what I should have opened with. I do all of the fight scenes, and then Marie comes in to get thrown across the room and hit a wall and crumple to the ground. She takes the bigger hits for me, the ones I’m not allowed to do. It’s hard. That was also something I had to learn, I had to step away. Because if you’re doing one fight scene in a movie, you might spend one day or two days - it depends how crazy it is. But you know that you have a finite amount of time. On this, if you get injured, we are shutting down.”
How did modeling lead to an acting career for you?
“I was doing theater throughout my elementary, high school life, and at the same time, I was attempting to convince people that I was attractive as a model. I got to go to different cities all over the world - Paris, Milan, New York, Tokyo - from the age of 14 onward, but I never took it seriously. I did it with the intention of making money to pay for college, and it was sort of a way to travel for free.
Eventually, I was like, ‘Okay, I’ve been doing this weird modeling thing for a while, I’m just going to move to New York for a year and see how it goes.’ And it was a failure. It was an epic failure, I went home so broke.
I’m like 20 at this point, and I was actually going to go to the University of Victoria that fall, but I just started getting back into theater in Vancouver. I met all of these fun actors and we started doing plays together and I started doing classes and I delayed university where I was going to study marine biology, and then I just never went back. I’ve always kind of lived in my head a little bit, but I never thought having that going in my brain or doing theater could ever amount to a career - I just didn’t put two and two together until I moved back home in my 20s and went full throttle.”
From How I Met Your Mother, you jumped into action roles with Avengers - how did that shift come about?
“If you’re lucky enough to get a job as an actor, I don’t think you can ever be picky. The Avengers thing came to me through my friendship with Joss Whedon (Avengers writer-director). We were friends, and he asked me to audition for Maria Hill. I didn’t even know who I was auditioning for. Really, my husband is such a huge comic book fan, and he was really jazzed about it. And so I was like, ‘Okay, this would be super fun.’ But it wasn’t anything that I was seeking out. And then when it was happening and I got to read the comics and I got into that world, it was really exciting to me.
I will say, I played soccer very competitively for 12 years of my life, so I’m a very physical person and I’m able to do a lot of that stuff just because I was on the pitch for most of my youth. It didn’t feel like a huge leap with getting down and dirty in terms of stunts. It might have seemed like it just because there’s such a difference between doing a sitcom and doing a big Marvel movie, but I was so grateful because it was an opportunity to do something different. I’m constantly trying to take the next role - if it comes to me. I’m looking to do something totally different than what I was just doing just to keep myself entertained and challenged.”
How are you spending your time while social distancing?
“I’m a preparer, I have been following this since January. When that doctor started posting all those videos in Wuhan, I was like ‘There’s something happening.’ I think I just kind of started freaking out and preparing for it mentally in February, and buying rice.
And we do this subscription called What The Crap. They make recycled toilet paper, but they’ve sent us, over the last year, so much toilet paper that literally every cupboard in my house had at least six rolls of toilet paper. When this thing hit, I was like, ‘We have got, totally be accident 50 rolls of toilet paper just stocked up.’
I am mostly mom-ing it up. I have two children, and I’ve taken on homeschool for my younger daughter, which has been kind of wonderful. Usually, our activities are mostly play-based, but it’s been really fun just seeing how smart she is. We’ve been doing a lot of science projects - a lot of slime making. We have two bunnies, so we made these bunny houses, and we’re going to build fairy houses next with what we find on our walk around the neighborhood.
So doing that, reading, I’m crushing my garden right now. I have got so many veggies coming up, but they need to grow faster because it is hard to get vegetables right now. So I’m like ‘Come on cucumbers, let’s do this!’ That’s been pretty satisfying, that’s been very therapeutic for me because I get to go out in the morning and check them out, water them.”
And I saw you’ve been involved with Jennifer Garner and Amy Adams’ Save With Stories initiative with Save the Children?
“I work with that organization a lot, and when the world shut down, I reached out to one of the representatives that I talk to at Save the Children, and I was like, ‘What are you guys doing? How can I help?’ And Jen Garner also works with them, so they put us in touch with each other and I recorded myself reading a story from my backyard.
They’ve collected money to provide food for these communities, working with the existing structure they have and working with food banks and providing help for families in need. I’ve worked with them for maybe three years, and there’s a community very close to me here in Los Angeles that I’ve spent a lot of time with over the years, organizing something for Christmas or Thanksgiving.”
Stumptown is available for streaming on Hulu, and premieres in the UK on April 29 at 9pm on Alibi
