Thanks Warner Bros. Home Entertainment for the opportunity to talk with Daphne and Velma star Sarah Gilman!
Warner Bros. is bringing Scooby-Doo’s Daphne and Velma to blu-ray and digital with their very own live-action origin story. The film, produced by Ashley and Jennifer Tisdale’s Blondie Girl Productions, follows Daphne Blake (Sarah Jeffery) and Velma Dinkley’s (Sarah Gilman) first adventure before they joined Scooby and the rest of the Mystery Inc. gang. The film sees Daphne transferring to Ridge Valley High, where her online bestie Velma Dinkley also attends. The two BFF's have to figure out why the school's top-performing students are disappearing, only to return in a zombie-like state. It's up Daphne and Velma to solve the mystery before they become the next victims.
Gilman had the tough task of tackling one of animation's iconic characters, Velma Dinkley, and has managed to put her own unique stamp on this version of the character. When offered the role, she was in the middle of attending USC for film and television. At that point she had to make the choice of accepting the role and dropping out, which would mean missing out on the rest of the semester and losing any progress she'd made. She eventually chose to take the role because of "the fact that it was playing Velma. A character that I know and love and I believed that I could represent, do some justice to. And I knew that if I said 'no' to this opportunity to play such an iconic character, to be able to say I played Velma, I would regret it a long time."
After being cast, Gilman had to get over "the fear that I had to portray such an iconic character. Because she is iconic and there are so many people that know Velma and love Velma and have their own perceptions of Velma. I was really worried about fleshing her out and working on her and making her a little different and how people would react to that and if it would alienate some people. I really didn't wanna do that."
To create this version of Velma, Gilman started with the hair. "When I flew out to film the movie, they cut it into the Velma hairstyle. Then going into wardrobe and trying on all of Velma's clothes, that stuff actually really does make a difference, at least for me, in terms of settling into the character and figuring out who they are and how they operate and how they feel."
When it came time to get into character, "a lot of the creativity and figuring out who Velma was came from talking to our director Suzi Yoonessi and our creative producers, Jennifer Tisdale and Ashley Tisdale. Kind of figuring out how this three-dimensional, fleshed-out Velma was gonna be. Because the cartoon is great and there's definitely parts where I wanna take from that, but it's also a very flat character. So to expand on that there was a lot of talks with the creative team on this film to figure out who she was gonna be."
When it comes to possible sequels, Gilman says, "If anyone had any plans to continue this, I would definitely be on board. It was so much fun doing this project that I would love the chance to play Velma again and see what shenanigans she and Daphne get into next for sure."
We can only hope that there will be sequels for this fun, family friendly film. We want to see an Avengers-style series where we get all of the origin stories for the Mystery Inc. gang and then a film where they all come together to form the crew that we all know and love. Daphne and Velma is out now on Blu-ray and digital from Warner Bros. home video.
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