Dex Parios isn’t your normal detective—and that’s exactly what makes Stumptown special.
Cobie Smulders stars in the new ABC drama as Dex, a veteran who’s making a living as a private detective, getting entangled with the police, gambling debts and a complicated love life. In the exclusive sneak peek above, Dex meets Detective Miles Hoffman (Michael Ealy) and…there are sparks. Of course Dex has been involved in a sticky situation and she’s got some explaining to do.
“The thing is, kidnapping is pretty serious business, so you’ll probably have to tell a few more of us down at the station,” Hoffman says.
“No, I don’t think so…As long as she’s out there, I have to be looking for her. The station is up, not down. I don’t know why people say that,” Dex corrects him.
Dex isn’t off that easy, there are 14 unpaid parking tickets to account for.
“Apparently there’s a warrant out, so, we’re going to go up to the station,” Hoffman says.
To get the character down, Smulders said she did research into women in the military.
“It was really kind of delving into the PTSD, physicalizing that for television because you have to kind of show it in a way, figuring out what the triggers for her specifically would be and then just trying to personalize all of that stuff in a way that felt normal,” Smulders told E! News about her new role.
Despite having played women in the military, Smulders said the character was unlike anything she’s encountered before.
“The role of Dex in this show—I think when you go into something that could potentially, not to jinx anything, go for multiple seasons, you want to choose something that you’re never going to be bored with, that’s going to be challenging, that it’s a character that you want to live with for a while. And I just fell in love with this character,” Smulders said at the 2019 Television Critics Association press tour. “And there are certainly aspects of Scherbatsky in there, but it is a departure. Certainly, going from a multicam back to now a single cam, that’s a very different process. It’s a different beast. But it was more about finding something that I think would always be challenging and always interesting and fun to play rather than finding something a polar opposite or a genre that I really loved. I just want to be her for a while.”
Stumptown premieres Wednesday, Sept. 25 at 10 p.m. on ABC.