Mindy Kaling’s Velma – the HBO Max animated series centered around the Scooby-Doo character – has landed an all-star cast.
Glenn Howerton, Sam Richardson and Constance Wu will star with Kaling in the adult animated series, which follows the origin story of Velma Dinkley (voiced by Kaling), the underrated brain of Mystery Inc. The four performed on stage together on Thursday at the New York Comic Con on .
Howerton (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) will play Fred on the series. Richardson (Veep, The Afterparty) will voice Norville aka Shaggy and Wu (Lyle, Lyle Crocodile) will play Daphne.
The cast also includes Jane Lynch, Wanda Sykes, Russell Peters, Melissa Fumero, Stephen Root, Gary Cole, Ken Leung, Cherry Jones, Frank Welker, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Fortune Feimster, Yvonne Orji, Sarayu Blue, Nicole Byer, Ming -Na Wen, Shay Mitchell, Debby Ryan, Kulap Vilaysak and NBA All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns. Welker has voiced Fred in almost every animated iteration of Scooby-Doo since its inception in 1969, and has also provided Scooby’s voice in a number of productions.
Kaling showed a nor from Velma at Mays Upfronts, who revealed the character is South Asian. She said at the time, “Nobody’s imagination has ever had a problem with a talking dog solving puzzles, so I think we can handle a brown Velma.”
Whether Velma is a lesbian – as she apparently is in the latest Scooby-Doo animated film – remains to be seen.
Kaling is Executive Producer on Velma with frequent collaborators Charlie Grandy (The Office, The Mindy Project), Howard Klein and Sam Register, President of Warner Bros. Animation, Cartoon Network Studios and Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe.
HBO Max also released a teaser for Velma, which pokes fun at complaints about changes to long-standing intellectual property. Check it out below.