Ahead of her portrayal of Ann Coulter in FX’s Impeachment: American Crime Story, Cobie Smulders sat down for a lengthy interview on how she ended up taking over the role from Betty Gilpin and what it was like trying to recreate a late ’90s Coulter who was just beginning her career as a conservative firebrand.
As part of her process, Smulders listened to all 12 of Coulter’s book, which she readily admits got very anti-immigrant as they went on. However, Smulders was adamant that her research mainly involved nailing the cadence of Coulter’s speech patterns and trying to incorporate for penchant of always acting like she’s the smartest person in the room. That said, Smulders wasn’t completely walled off from Coulter’s political beliefs, and she had an interesting response when Marlow Stern asked her if she thinks Coulter actually believes what she’s saying or if she’s just a “performance artist.” Via The Daily Beast:
You know, it’s hard to say, because one of the things I try to do is say, I can’t really know anybody until I have a personal moment with them. She has a political style—to go in and stir up the pot—and that’s how she’s made her career. But I don’t know what she feels or thinks genuinely. She’s outspoken about a lot of different things, and to be comfortable saying some of the beliefs that she has out loud, it leads me to believe that there’s probably a part of her that does [believe it]. She’s still an enigma to me.
So essentially Smulders feels Coulter is most likely a “true believer,” which isn’t great if you’ve heard any of the things that Ann Coulter has said over the years. Case in point, the lady super hates immigrants. So much so that she even got mad at Trump after he softened his anti-immigration stance while in office, and it wasn’t all that soft. We’re going to side with Smulders and agree that Coulter probably isn’t putting on an act.
Impeachment: American Crime Story airs Tuesdays on FX.
(Via The Daily Beast)
