Meet Constance Wu who is playing Daphne Blake on Velma, and Charlie Grandy, one of the executive producer developing the series.
Chris Im: My first question is for you, Charlie. I know that you’re a frequent collaborator with Mindy (Kaling). I was just wondering what it’s like working together on Velma with her on this project.
Charlie Grandy: It was amazing. I mean, it was her idea. She came to me and said, “hey, I’d like to do a show about Velma with this sort of Riverdale spin, and maybe there’s a serial killer.” She said that she’d always identify [with] Velma as the smartest person in the room who does all the work and gets none of the credit. I’ve worked with her for a long time and so I knew how to write for her, and it just kind of went from that. She handed it over to me and said “hey, go take a whack at this.” And it was incredible. It was really just a lot of fun.
Chris Im: Do you have any future plans for the Velma series after this season?
Charlie Grandy: I mean, I have plans, I hope. We’ll see!
Chris Im: You’re bringing life to a brand-new aspect of Daphne. I just wanted to know what your thoughts were in playing a character that’s been beloved to so many people throughout several generations.
Constance Wu: I really didn’t think of it as bringing a brand-new aspect. I just thought of it as uncovering a lot of the humanity that she didn’t get credit for. Because I think that she was sort of always just the hot girl in the original. And hot girls exist, but they’re also people and they also have agency and desires and confusion and history and things that they’re trying to figure out.
Chris Im: Her being an Asian character in this series does that mean anything to you by any chance?
Constance Wu: Well, I mean, I’m an Asian character in the series of my own life. So, I bring along that history. But I do think the fact that she is adopted, and she would probably have known very early on she was adopted just because [of] how she looks compared to her moms.
I think that brings an aspect of wanting to know something about your roots and origin that is something I think a lot of Asian kids who grew up in America sort of discover when they’re older. I think maybe when they’re younger they might reject it a little bit, but I think when you start becoming a teenager or a young adult, that’s when you start having a little bit more curiosity for it.
Chris Im: Is that going to be a huge part of her storyline? Her being an adopted Asian American in Velma?
Constance Wu: I think her being adopted is definitely a huge part of just her own life storyline, I mean that’s literally her origin story. But I mean the show encompasses so many other things and lots of other characters. So, is it going to be a show that’s about adoption? We have serial killers. We got so many things. We got a lot in store in the show.
Velma is out now on HBO Max!
Interviews edited for clarity.
