Mindy Kaling Praises Velma's Queerness, But Fans Aren't So Pleased

Despite some positive early reviews for HBO Max's controversial Velma animated series, IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes ratings for the show have tanked since it first premiered earlier this month.

Prior to the show's release, showrunner Charlie Grandy and executive producer Mindy Kaling (who also voices Velma) sat down for a press session at the New York Comic-Con to present the upcoming series.

According to Popverse, who was able to attend the briefing, Kaling described the series as "a scary show with murders."

When the conversation turned to Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!, the latest animated film in the long-running, popular franchise and the first to depict Velma as an openly queer character, Grandy said, "We're very aware of the story. I think it's just great that you can tell these stories about Velma that have been talked about forever, but now you can actually address them in all the different iterations of Velma."

Kaling weighed in, saying, "Her [Velma's] self-discovery is a really big part of this series. We don't want to ignore that she's an icon for young gay women, and I think that's really interesting. Her figuring it out is a big part of the show and why it's really fun to do."

Since the show's release, however, fans have been less than thrilled. A Reddit thread on r/HBOMAX discussed whether Velma is "that bad" after a screenshot showed a 1.7 out of 10 star rating on IMDb and a 56 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. As of this writing, though, the IMDb rating has gone down to 1.4 stars with 22,000 votes and the average audience score on Rotten Tomatoes now sits at 6 percent.

In the Reddit thread, many fans have agreed with the ratings, leaving comments like, "There's really no redeeming qualities in that show. The characters are a bastardized version of what they have been established as."

Others also attacked Kaling, saying things like, "The show has absolutely nothing to do with Velma or with the Scooby-Doo franchise. This animated series is Mindy Kaling giving her perception of the world, her internalized self-loathing, the Twitter threads that she finds amusing, skewed reenactments of her unrequited crushes, and creating a series."

Episodes of Velma stream Thursdays exclusively on HBO Max.

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