Although HBO Max’s animated series Velma won’t debut until 2023, the Scooby-Doo prequel hosted a panel at the 2022 New York Comic Con. Before the panel, HBO Max announced the show’s voice cast will include Glenn Howerton as Fred, Sam Richardson as Shaggy, and Constance Wu as Daphne. Executive producer Mindy Kaling is the voice of Velma.
The cast also features Jane Lynch, Wanda Sykes, Russell Peters, Melissa Fumero, Stephen Root, Gary Cole, Ken Leung, Cherry Jones, Fortune Feimster, Yvonne Orji, Sarayu Blue, Nicole Byer, Ming-Na Wen, Shay Mitchell, Debby Ryan, Kulap Vilaysak, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Scooby-Doo veteran Frank Welker.
Velma is targeting an adult audience and will tell the origin story of Scooby-Doo’s Mystery Inc’s Velma Dinkley, the brains of the gang. The first season will consist of 10 episodes and has showrunner Charlie Grandy, Howard Klein, and Sam Register as executive producers.
What We Learned from the Velma NYCC Panel:
Mindy Kaling, Sam Richardson, Glenn Howerton, Constance Wu, and showrunner Charlie Grandy took part in the panel which began with a screening of the series premiere. Kaling, Wu, and Grandy appeared in person (with Kaling and Wu making their first-ever Comic Con appearances) while Richardson and Howerton appeared via Zoom.
Charlie Grandy and Mindy Kaling have worked together since 2008 and really understand each other’s vision for Velma. It’s a very collaborative process, and Charlie viewed his job as facilitating Mindy’s vision.
“Listen, we love the series. We love these characters so much. Charlie created what I think is an amazing homage to this group – especially this character. I’ve always – growing up – identified with Velma. She was so cute but not traditionally hot. Super smart, super thick glasses, questionable haircut…I just loved the series and I feel so honored I get to do the voice,” said Kaling, kicking off the discussion.
“I couldn’t resist it,” admitted Kaling. “Let’s be honest; I sound like a 15-year-old girl from Encino. I thought it would be fun and I thought that I could bring something to the character that we haven’t seen.”
This is not your typical Saturday morning series, and Kaling found Velma appealing because it hadn’t been done before for an adult audience. “We just thought these characters are high schoolers that lent themselves so well to an adult version,” explained Kaling.
Kaling describes Howerton’s Fred as a much more normal character than he usually gets to play. But other than Fred, Kaling doesn’t think that whiteness defined the characters in the original series. Howerton was perfect for the role because of his comedic chops and his humanity.
Howerton changed up his voice to play a high schooler, explaining he channeled an extremely entitled teenage kid. “I started with that but honestly, I half expected them to stop me and be like, ‘That’s a little too strange.’”
Howerton, who’s used to playing pretentious characters, said this series makes him laugh incredibly hard. “I don’t know why I find this style of humor so funny,” said Howerton. “Whenever I get to play an entitled white dude, it just makes me laugh. It’s funny. I think I probably relate to it in ways that I’m loathed to admit, but as far as driving a strange van – that’s not really something I can relate to.”
The Shaggy that Sam Richardson voices in the series isn’t like the Shaggy we saw in the classic animated comedy. Asked if he could explain what turned his character into the burnout we all know and love, Richardson couldn’t – it would be too much of a spoiler. However, Grandy promised the transition “will be deserved.”
Velma is the polar opposite of Daphne in this new show, and Daphne’s basically a mean girl. Wu said lending her voice to that sort of character was amazing. “To get to really sink into a character like that, that’s what you want to do,” said Wu.
Wu didn’t really alter her voice for the part. “I don’t think I’d be very good at sounding pre-pubescent, even though I look it sometimes,” joked Wu.
Velma isn’t erasing anything that went before it in the Scooby universe, but the animated show won’t include Scooby himself. (They couldn’t use the dog according to Warner Bros, plus the dog made it more of a kids show.) It’s also going to be serialized, rather than a mystery-of-the week format.
Kaling promised the series will really explore the world of high schoolers, including events and dances, along with being a murder mystery. Seeing this strange group from different social cliques come together as friends is part of the fun.
Kaling also teased a lot of the characters will have sexual tension with Velma. The journey of Velma’s self-discovery is something that really drew Kaling to the project, but she wouldn’t reveal if we’ll see a Velma/Daphne hookup.
Daphne’s personality will be different from what fans may expect. “She was the demure one and I think that’s what’s so fun about this character now is that she’s not demure. She has her own mysteries that she has to figure out about her own life that we find out about,” explained Kaling.
“All of the characters…we really delve into their family life, the things that we didn’t get to see in the original series,” added Kaling. Grandy confirmed we’ll meet their parents and they’ll have complicated home lives.
As for the animation style, Grandy said, “We wanted to update it. We didn’t want it to look too much like the original. We wanted it to have its own distinct look. We wanted to find that balance because we put a lot of work into finding character design.”
Grandy added: “We wanted something that could balance both comedy and horror – that could go back and forth. I think we did three rounds of searches with 10 different per, and it was finally in the third round we saw the same one.”
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