Stumptown/ABCCobie Smulders plays a complicated no-nonsense private eye in the new series Stumptown, which premieres tonight on ABC.
Smulders plays a woman named Dex, who is running from a terrible past. When it comes to Dex’s personal demons, however, Smulders told ABC audio that they sometimes get the better of her.
“She was in the military, and now she’s been out for about 10 years, and she is suffering PTSD because of her experiences there,” she explains. “So it comes up when it comes up and she medicates that with many different things.”
Stumptown is based on a graphic novel of the same name, which is a nickname for the city of Portland — in which the series is set. However, the How I Met Your Mother and Avengers star revealed that the series was going to be named something else had she not intervened.
Smulders fought to keep the series’ name because the name is important to the city of Portland. “I think it’s because it’s a logging city, it’s a logging part of the country, so it’s like tree stumps,” She said. “I also heard there was a rule against building over a certain height of a building.”
Though she won in the end, not everyone loved the title at first, including star Michael Ealy. He told ABC audio, “I remember not liking the title when I first read it.”
His opinion softened when he arrived in Portland and began learning its history. “You meet the people, and you experience the town, and I think this is something that we actually have the possibility of doing, you shed light on why it’s called Stumptown, and you shed light on the history of the place,” he elaborated.
Stumptown premieres tonight at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.
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