Kirsten Vangsness on the Evolution of ‘Criminal Minds’ and Penelope Garcia

For over 18 years, Kirsten Vangsness has been a staple in homes across the world.

The queer actress is famously known for playing the vibrant and quirky Penelope Garcia for 15 seasons in CBS’ hit drama Criminal Minds, which sadly ended in 2020. However, and fortunately for hardcore fans, the series was picked up and re-imagined for Paramount+, along with Vangsness reprising the fan favorite character.

Premiering last November, Criminal Minds: Evolution picks up after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the FBI’s elite team of criminal profilers from the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) regrouping to track down a complex serial killer who is recruiting people into his murderous web. As the world slowly starts to open back up and the network goes operational, the team must hunt them down, one murder at a time.

Criminal Minds: Evolution was recently renewed for another season, bringing the grand total to 17, and Vangsness took some time to talk about reprising her role and returning to the Criminal Minds set with OFM.

Congratulations on Criminal Minds: Evolution being picked up for a second season! How exciting is that?

It’s very exciting! We were already excited that we got to do an initial season, and even though it’s the same and we all get to hang out together again, it’s so different, but it couldn’t be better. I think I can speak for everybody and say we are overjoyed!

Yeah, going from CBS to Paramount+, were there any major changes you had to get used to, or has it been business as usual?

Oh, no. Everything was different (laughs). I think when you love what you do, and I love this so much, going back, it’s like, oh my gosh, do I even know how to do this stuff? That’s the great thing about the whole cast of people I work with. Everyone kind of went back to a beginner’s mind, so you could come in and be like, I have a little bit of stage fright. However, even if everyone was doing other shows, movies, and things like that, it was like, oh, we’re back, we care about this a lot, and we feel like we owe it to this huge fan base that we built. You can’t reinvent the wheel, but you’re on a whole new platform.

The look of it is different, the way they create the stories are different, and the characters are doing different things. The writers were brilliant because they sort of built in all these obstacles at the top that forced everybody to be like, okay, who are you now? Criminal Minds itself can stand alone, but it was almost like we built a Bible. I kept telling people, you can watch old Criminal Minds if you want. That’s fine, but we’re going to use stuff from it so that it’s fun, and that’s where I think our showrunner, Erica Messer, our executive producers, and the writers really shined in.

They shine in so many things, but they were able to Easter egg the whole thing. If you watched the show before, you’re like, I know that and I know what’s going on. Even if there are no lines, you know the backstory of that particular thing, and I think that was fantastic. The writing staff did such a genius job, and they hired people who were writing assistants and those who have worked and gone up the ranks becoming full-fledged writers. They’re back and they’ve got a whole different kind of energy. So, I think even the writing is different. There’s so much freedom, space, and different stuff going on.

You have been playing Penelope since the series inception in 2005. How does it feel to know that you have been a staple in homes across the world for all these years?

Strange, but good! To be honest, I don’t watch the show. I say, you get to pick one or the other. I will watch the show, or I will be in the show. I can’t do both because it’s very violent for me, and I derive my entertainment pleasure from shows like Doctor Who. I love Criminal Minds, but I just don’t watch it for entertainment. So, my point is, I don’t have that thing in my brain where I’m realizing that other people are watching this. When I’m at work and they’re filming it, there are people in the room watching, and it’s always kind of a delicious feeling. This is the best kind of role to play for such a long time.

What do people do when they’re an awful villain or they’ve killed some beloved character? Garcia saves the day in every single episode. You’re nervous and being like, oh my God, they’re going to die! Then I pull up some coordinates and everything’s fine. It’s such a cool feeling knowing that I have become this friend in the world, and I get hugged a lot at airports (laughs). More than most people. It was a little startling at first, but then you realize people just can’t help it. They literally can’t help it, and it’s just great. There are zero downsides to playing Penelope Garcia.

Do you have any idea what we can expect from Penelope in season 17?

What’s interesting is, there was this idea floating around about Garcia having a love interest. I love how the writers come up with ideas, but they are constantly moving them around and bending them as we go. I had written the series finale and came up with the idea that Garcia would leave and never come back. So, there was this obstacle of, who is she now? When you quit a job and say you’re never coming back, but then you come back, it’s like, who are you?

Later on in the season, Tyler, who is my love interest and played by the fantastic Ryan-James Hatanaka, there was a scene where you can see that he kind of did something behind my back. There wasn’t a lot of information in the lines, but when you initially looked at the script, you can tell by the way it’s written, Garcia is sad, disappointed, and hurting. More so, she thinks Tyler is dangerous because he did something he shouldn’t have done.

The writers did this really cool thing that I think happens all the time. You fall for someone because you’re super chemically attracted to them, but then you realize, uh oh, I’m chemically attracted to them because they remind me of my primary caregiver that was not so great, and I need to go back to therapy because I’m making that bad choice. It was that kind of thing, and even though she broke up with him, she’s still attracted to him.

They never said Tyler wasn’t going to be in the world again, and I’m always curious about Garcia’s personal life. That’s all I really care about. I know the writers are deep at work, and I talk regularly to at least three of them. It’s been very fun to see the little glimmer in their eyes and know that they’re writing, but none of us have any idea what’s going on. I trust them very much.

Personally, you identify as queer. Do you think there could be a possible LGBTQ storyline with Penelope at some point?

I don’t think so, and I’ve come to peace with this because I’ve pitched this idea a thousand times. I’m not a straightforward queer person. I’ve been in a very heteronormative cisgender relationship for the last three years, and if I wanted to, I could very comfortably back away Homer Simpson style into the hedges and be like, I’m a straight person. I can’t do that because I’m not straight, and I wouldn’t want to, but as a result, I find myself often having to come out. Only other queer people will understand this. If you’ve been around a bunch of straight people for too long, you become antsy and feel the need to move away.

When we started this season of Criminal Minds: Evolution, my genius boss Erica Messer was talking to us all on a Zoom call. We were all in different parts of the world, the whole cast, and she was bringing up stuff that was going to happen in the show. She’s like, okay, the BAU has been gutted, this is happening, that’s happening, and Aisha, who plays Dr. Tara Lewis, is going to fall in love with this amazing woman. It felt like someone stabbed my insides. I was like, what’s going on? Why am I not happy? I was literally freaking out and felt panic.

It absolutely made sense for Aisha to have a LGBTQ storyline because her sister is gay, she’s a huge ally, her fluidity is not in question, there’s no reason why this shouldn’t happen, but I felt so left out. I was like, I don’t know how to tell anybody in the room because we’re all on Zoom, and God love them, they’re all straight people. It’s hard to explain. Thank goodness I’m very close with both Erica and Aisha, and when I brought this up to Erica, she was like, oh! I thought I told you about this before. I was like, no, and she acknowledged that I pitched a LGBTQ storyline for Garcia, but it made more sense for Aisha.

Aisha and I talked about it, and she was so excited to do it, and I was excited for her as well. Now, I will argue that this has made the show doubly queer. You’ve already got me, but now you have Aisha, as well as Nicole Pacent, who plays Tara’s love interest. Everybody says, we all know Garcia is queer. That is not an arrow that ever shoots straight. We haven’t seen all the people she’s gone out with, but rest assured, it’s there. Just by being there, there is representation, and I have to remind myself of that because of my own internalized homophobia and I’m not part of the family nonsense.

In March, you were in the world premiere of Nimrod at Theatre of Note in Los Angeles. Can you tell us more about that?

Yes, Nimrod is a wonderful play written by Phinneas Kiyomura, who is an incredible Los Angeles-based playwright, as well as my best friend. I’m so proud of this play, and it’s five acts, full Shakespeare, but it’s dumb Shakespeare. It’s Shakespeare with a sort of modern language, but it’s about the last presidency. The entire cast was gender bent and race bent, and Nimrod is the King of Babble, so it’s all about the destruction of language and stuff, and I played President Nimrod. AKA, Donald Trump.

When you explain it to people, it’s like, this is the play, it’s weird, but it’s incredible. Aisha came and saw it, and she was like, this needs to go on Off- Broadway. As a queer person, it’s especially hard to say to another member of the family, hey, watch a story about the Trump presidency. It’ll feel life affirming and cathartic. You’d be like, how is that humanly possible? But it is! The play was filmed, and it will be streaming soon, so I highly suggest everyone to check it out.

Stay up-to-date and connect with Vangsness by following her on Twitter @vangsness, Instagram @kirstenvangsness, or visit her official website, kirstenvangsness.com.

Photos courtesy of Troy Blendell & Paramount+