Glenn Howerton's Inspiration For Fred In HBO Max's Velma Came From Joking With His Friends
Glenn Howerton knows a thing or two about playing smarmy, aggressive guys who are obsessed with their hair, so it made perfect sense when he was cast as the voice of Fred in Mindy Kaling's "Scooby-Doo" spinoff series, "Velma." Howerton is best known for playing the creepy bartender Dennis Reynolds on the long-running FX series "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," but he's also great as former Harvard professor Jack Griffin on the Peacock series "A.P. Bio," and he's hilarious as fitness trainer Don Chumph in FX's "Fargo."
Now he gets to add playing a member of Mystery Incorporated to his resume. Well, sort of — the characters in "Velma" haven't quite teamed up to solve mysteries yet when the series starts. Either way, Howerton is great casting for a snarky take on perpetual rich-boy himbo Fred, and apparently he got inspiration for his approach from just hanging out with some of his favorite people. How, exactly? In an interview with Toonado, the actor opened up about his way of voicing one of the preppiest cartoon characters in all of popular culture, and it turns out he had a little help from his friends.
It's all about the entitlement
Glenn Howerton is well aware that he has a "proclivity" for playing "petulant, entitled people," but his take on Fred didn't come from any of his previous onscreen personas. Instead, he realized that he had been pretending to be someone just like Fred for a while when joking around with his famous, funny friends:
"I have this group of friends that are all really funny. They're actually all actor friends, and you know how you and your friends are always doing bits? Well, me and my friends are always doing bits, and one bit that was like a very frequent bit amongst this group of friends was the extremely petulant, entitled, kid who's like, 'Mom! Would you just give me exactly what I want?!' Yeah, and so we would always do this, and we're always kind of messing around with his character. So, as soon as I read the script, and I read Fred, I was like, oh, he is that guy. That's the guy! Okay, so it was kind of a version of something, kind of a bit that me and my buddies have been doing for years."
It's not difficult to imagine Howerton and some of his funny friends joking about a spoiled child character who demands that people give him what he wants, when he wants it, but now I want to know who helped him come up with this bit. Was the gang of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" throwing this one around on set or before hitting "record" on their podcast? Did he and Patton Oswalt come up with it on "A.P. Bio"? Wherever this character was born, it would have been fun to be around to witness it.
A more cynical take on a beloved franchise
"Velma" approaches the characters from "Scooby Doo" long before they rode around in the Mystery Machine and solved crimes with their loyal canine companion, Scooby, and it has a darker, adult take on the material than we've seen before. In addition to Glenn Howerton, the series stars Mindy Kaling as Velma, Constance Wu as Daphne, and Sam Richardson as Norville (also known as "Shaggy"). Scooby isn't in the series, both because he's probably not even a puppy yet, and because Kaling wanted to make the series more mature and a talking dog, uh, kind of messes with that maturity. Then again, if "Harley Quinn" can have a major character that's a talking plant and still make me cry? Then maybe "Velma" could have Scooby show up after all. Just saying.
If you want to see Howerton's spoiled rich boy version of Fred from "Scooby Doo," check out "Velma," now streaming on HBO Max.