The RTÉ Guide's John Byrne meets Kirstin Vangsness, who plays cookie computer whizz Penelope Garcia in Criminal Minds.
We’re about a zillion miles from the beach, but the sun is shining brightly in Glendale, Los Angeles, and the RTÉ Guide is on the set of Criminal Minds. On top of that, Kirsten Vangsness – who plays the distinctively dressed FBI Technical Analyst Penny Garcia in the cracking procedural drama – is smiling like only Californians can smile. Today is going to be a good day.
Of all the cast in this tightly-knit group, Vangsness is the most pleasant. Always chirpy, friendly, full of laughter and effortlessly self-effacing, her position is similar to that of Jorge Garcia (aka Hurley) in Lost: she’s the one everyone loves, the good-humoured glue that holds it all together. Kirstin, the self-confessed hippie, is the heart and soul of the operation. Just like her character.
If anything, the trippy Penny is a toned down version of the real Kirstin Vangsness, who dresses like a human kaleidoscope and talks like it’s more vital to her than breathing. So, it’s almost a cliché to discover she was once a very shy girl, who, rather successfully, took up acting to overcome her introverted ways.
"Well", she recalls, conveniently waving a photograph of herself when she was 12, "I was just telling the girl in make-up, I took drama because I didn't talk to anyone in all of eighth grade because I was so shy. My mother said, 'You take drama or you take shop'. That's the class where you have to build things. I didn't want to take shop, so I took drama. And I wanted to be more outgoing. I got made fun of a lot, so I didn't talk at all."
Even back then she had a distinctive style – not that it went down well with the conformist school life that surrounded her. "The way I dressed . . . my mother would take us to the thrift store. We didn't have a lot of money: my parents were teachers and my dad wasn't around a lot, so my mom was basically a single parent. We lived in this very small town and we didn't have a lot of money, especially during the summer because you're usually not working for those three months. So come August, when it's time to get school clothes, my mom would take us to the thrift store. She would give us 20 bucks and be like, 'Go get your clothes'." While her sister would, "find things that were sort of like a reasonable facsimile of what the kids were wearing", Vangsness’ purchases were a little more idiosyncratic. "One year", she recalls, "it was my first grade year and I found a fake fur coat, with a pimp daddy collar and it was about $17."
Now, when the 38-year-old meets people from her high-school days, they say that she dresses exactly the same way. Laughing, she confesses: "I have clothes that I bought in high school that I still wear. I never changed the way I dress".
Not to imply, of course, that she hasn’t changed since childhood. Quite the opposite, in fact. Acting gave her the confidence to the things she wants to do, rather than conform to some stereotype. What you see is what you get with Garcia, because this lady tells it in her way, with her own style, with her talent. Her career so far hasn’t been a gravy train ride by any stretch; Vangsness certainly never saw herself starring in a hit TV show when she was working on the more fringey side of theatre.
"You know", she smiles, "We all have that part of us that is hopeful, that whispers in the back of your mind, kind of quietly, 'it's going to be OK'. I did this for so long just as part of the bohemia, so now that I’m able to do this job for a living, is like the best punchline of the longest joke. You know what I mean?" The smile gets even broader. "I blossomed", she adds, without a trace of ego.
Unlike many others in Hollywood, Kirstin Vangsness has made it on her own terms rather than by merely giving producers what they want in order to get ahead. She never thought she’d be part of a mainstream success like Criminal Minds.
"No", she insists, almost falling off her chair at the thought that this was all part of some Grand Plan. "I really thought I'd come to great peace with the idea that I was going to do this for the rest of my life. I knew I was going to be an actress for the rest of my life and I knew I was going to live on cat food. I thought that's probably the way it goes. And I was OK with it.
"And, you know, isn't that weird the way the world works out? Because I struggled for such a long time, people are like, 'Well, Kirsten, you know, she doesn't really do anything. She's still just an actress. She's just struggling' and blah, blah, blah. I felt bad about it, like I should stop and go be like regular people. Because at a certain point you're supposed to wake up and shut down all your dreams. All of a sudden your dreams should be like your pension, instead of the thing that brings you joy.
"When I stopped that and went, 'you know what? I'm just going to do this anyway and I'm not going to think about making money. I'm just going to do it because I like to do it so much'. That's when the world opened up. So I'm very fortunate and I believe in that so strongly. It's so nice to be an example of that, because I always believed that and everyone thought I was such a Pollyanna and now I can say, 'yes. I am a Pollyanna and I'm proud of it'. So that's good."
In Wednesday’s Criminal Minds, Garcia steps up from her familiar role as the office-bound techie who supports the BAU team when they’re out in the field. This time around she plays a crucial role in the case, when she travels to Alaska with the crew to investigate the murders of several residents of a small town.
It’s a traumatic episode for Garcia, as she gets to stare death in the face as she inadvertently overhears and disturbs the murderer carrying out one of his grisly attacks.
"The people are lovely and my job is weird and fun", is how Vangsness describes working on Criminal Minds, but she admits the show’s subject matter can be off-putting, especially this season. "So far it's been really intense", she concedes, nodding her head, well, intensely.
"We have some really great, creepy bad guys and some fantastic guest stars. Gavin Rossdale [the British rocker, married to Gwen Stefani, who appeared earlier this season] has been here for a week. And that's nice. I'm not gonna complain", she adds with a cheeky grin.
John Byrne
