Cobie Smulders is a Canadian-born actress known best for playing her iconic Robin Scherbatsky role in How I Met Your Mother. Not only has the actress since starred in multiple movies and series, but she is also a part of the billion-dollar Avengers franchise for a long time now.
However, despite the fame the actress has achieved, the spotlight keeps going back to her iconic role of Scherbatsky and how wonderful the actress was in the show. But what most fans don’t know was that the actress was secretly afraid that she might have pissed off many of her Canadian fans due to the role.
Cobie Smulders Was Worried About Her How I Met Your Mother Role
Cobie Smulders was propelled to fame by portraying Robin Scherbatsky in the popular sitcom How I Met Your Mother. It was her confident and unapologetically ambitious portrayal of Robin Scherbatsky that established her as a talented actress as well as paved the way for her to become part of her subsequent hit projects.
However, the character’s Canadian heritage was found disturbing by some fans because of the way it was brought forth in the show. Often in the show, her character was used to show the typical Canadian stereotypes while also subtly making jokes about the country.
And it was this aspect of the show and her character, the actress was most worried about. In an interview back in 2012, the actress stated,
“I worry that Canadians are somewhat insulted by what I say on the show at times. Because I kind of am, I’m like okay guys let’s tone it down a bit… When what they came to me and they said ‘you know second season.. we’re thinking about making Robin a Canadian’, and I said ‘okay’… And then the following episode was like so great… Robin was like… we have universal health care in our school system and all these great things… and then literally the next episode was like… we had one episode and then it was just from then on just trashing our country.”
However, despite it all, the actress wasn’t too bothered by it.
Cobie Smulders Wasn’t Too Bothered By Her Stereotypical Canadian Character
While the Avengers star was worried that her How I Met Your Mother character might make her fellow Canadians angry, she wasn’t too worried about playing the character but rather enjoyed it. During a Q&A with Ophra.com back in 2009, the actress said,
“It’s fun. It’s definitely quirky… My entire storyline was spitting out Canada-isms… I’m always throwing out sayings or things that nobody’s ever heard of because they’re Canadian. And then there’s Robin Sparkles, who was only a star in Canada, but that storyline’s a whole thing unto itself.”
While certain critics might have taken offense to it, the majority of Canadian viewers loved Smulders’ character, even calling it their favorite Canadian character ever.
How I Met Your Mother can be streamed on Amazon Prime.
