CBS’s Criminal Minds ran for 15 seasons before BAU’s on-air adventures concluded in 2020; well, for a while, anyway. In February 2Criminal021, news broke that streaming platform Paramount+ is aiming to give Criminal Minds its 16th season, and while pretty much everything about the project is still up in the air, it looks like the team may very well return. to catch a few more serial killers at some point in the future.
Although the stars of Criminal Minds have kept themselves mostly busy with other projects since the show ended, one imagines they wouldn’t mind a reunion at some point. After all, the show ran for so long that it’s natural to assume the actors became quite close over the years.
It turns out that one of the mainstays of Criminal Minds, technical analyst and hacker Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness), has a hidden history with one of the show’s long-running recurring characters. Gina Garcia-Sharp, who plays the appropriately named Agent Gina Sharp on the show, is a close friend of Vangsness, due to her history on stage as members of the same theater company.
The actress found that her association with the company, Theater of Note, is much longer than her tenure on Criminal Minds. In fact, shortly before joining the cast, she took home the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle’s Natalie Schafer Award for Best Emerging Comedy Actress. “I love these people,” Vangness said of her fellow Theater of Note compatriots in 2012.
Garcia-Sharp is another Theater of Note alumna, having appeared in her plays in 2017. Interestingly, none of the theater actresses had any idea her association with Criminal Minds would be so long. But the set of the series was greatly favored by the presence of the two actresses.
Penelope Garcia was originally supposed to be a one-off character, but the overwhelmingly positive response saw Vangsness step up to a lead role. Garcia-Sharp, meanwhile, was originally part of the show’s casting department, before ending up on camera.
