'Criminal Minds' Season 14 News & Updates: Kristen Vangsness Reveals Penelope Garcia's Secrets
Criminal Minds lead star Kirsten Vangsness has been portraying FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit tech analyst Penelope Garcia for 13 years now. On these years, she has been in front of computer screens or a TV monitor while giving a briefing to the BAU team about their next case.
Vangsness admitted that she spends a lot of time in front of computers. However, in reality, she is not staring at gruesome crime scenes or mugshots of criminal all day long.
"I have one, two, three, four, five. I've got six screens up at any given time. On one of them, there's a screen with a piece of wood and a baseball next to the piece of wood with the numbers.
I've been studying that piece of wood now for a decade. We haven't solved it. I feel like we'll eventually do an episode about that," she jokingly revealed in a HollywoodLife Podcast.
Vangsness also confessed that she is terrible at typing. To portray Garcia's excellent typing skills, she bought frog toys that light up and produce typing sound whenever she taps the keyboard.
The actress added that some people in the other departments of the show have also given a chance to be seen on TV but only as criminals. Vangsness said the person in the mugshot that is seen on her computer screen is actually someone she knows from the set.
Moreover, Vangsness also revealed that her actual personality also reflects on her Criminal Minds' workstation. Garcia's bubbly personality is evident in the stuff on her work desk. Some of these are actually personally supplied by Vangsness herself.
The actress revealed that she first brought to the set her grandmother's candy dish, then a bottle of lotion, then some weird-looking pen, and so on and so forth. Soon, Criminal Minds fans started to send her pens. All of which can be seen on Garcia's desk.
"So I started to do that and it got bigger and bigger and bigger. Then I would to a play and someone would come to the play and hand me a pen. Then it started to get more elaborate and someone would make me a pen. People would mail pens.
The whole desk is like a little art installment filled with stuff from fans or whatever, but its ten years worth. The lotion is all dried out, none of the pens work, it's strange," Vangsness said.
Meanwhile, the upcoming Criminal Minds Season 14 is expected to pick up from where the previous season's cliffhanger left off. In Season 13 finale, Penelope Garcia's life is in danger. The BAU analyst was taken at gunpoint by Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) Agent Mary Meadows (Karen David). Meadows issues an ultimatum to Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) to free cult leader "The Messiah" (Michael Hogan) and the BAU agent should join the cult or else Garcia will die.
Criminal Minds Season 14 will kick off in fall. The 14th season's first episode will also mark the show's 300th episode thus it is expected to be an intense opening for the CBS series.
