Mindy Kaling Shares First Look at Her Adult-Themed SCOOBY-DOO Spinoff Series VELMA
Mindy Kaling recently shared the first look at her upcoming animated Scooby-Doo spinoff series Velma. The series is described as a "comedic origin story" focusing on Velma, and this first image shows the titled character discovering a young women's dead body on the floor of a girl’s locker room. As you can see, her skull sliced off and her brain was removed. There are several other female characters in the image including Daphne, who seems to have just jumped out of the shower.
Kaling addressed the fact that Velma is a woman of color in the series saying:,"Hopefully you noticed my Velma is South Asian. If people freak out about that, I don't care." She defended her decision to change up the character saying that if “Scooby-Doo had a talking dog that could solve crimes, then her Velma can be brown."
During a previous interview with Seth Meyers on his Late Night show, she addressed the social media backlash to her new vision of Velma, saying:
"When it was announced that I was going to do the voice of Velma, people were very supportive and happy on Twitter. So I felt great because these are really intense fans—cartoon, comic book fans. And especially [for] a legacy show like this… People were not happy. There was a lot of, 'So, not Velma?' Those kind of tweets. 'Not the classic Velma that I'm always thinking about?'
“First of all, I didn't know that she elicited such strong reactions in either direction. I just couldn't understand how people couldn't imagine a really smart, nerdy girl with terrible eyesight who loved to solve mysteries could not be Indian. There are Indian nerds. It shouldn't be a surprise to people, but people are like, 'No, no, no.' But it made me think, 'OK, we've got to be really careful with this character,' which we will be because we love her."
I’m just waiting to see if the series actually ends up entertaining me! If it tells fun stories and makes me laugh, that’s all I’m really hoping for. The series is coming to HBO Max. What do you all think?