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Kirsten Vangsness is dancing as fast as she can

When Criminal Minds returns to CBS for its seventh season in September, Kirsten Vangsness will be there, as usual. Despite shakeups in the cast last year, the out actress (who has been with the show since its inception) has stuck around, playing the eccentric FBI technical analyst Penelope Garcia. And in the off season, she has been keeping herself busy by writing and starring in plays at the Theatre of NOTE in Los Angeles, guesting on two different web series and working on a musical film she originally wrote for the stage.

Somewhere in there, she has some free time to spend with fiancee Melanie Goldstein and attend press events, like the CBS TCA party where I caught up with her at last week. Kirsten spoke with me about her first love (theater), her excitement for the return of co-stars AJ Cook and Paget Brewster and when she and Melanie will say “I do.”

AfterEllen.com: You have a ton of side projects going on right now.

Kirsten Vangsness: I’m doing a play written by my best friend, who used to be my boyfriend. He’s now my best friend. It’s like a twisted Douglas Sirk thing where I get to make out with this girl, who’s been one of my friends forever, and it’s this crazy ’50s David Lynch-like – it’s totally different than Criminal Minds. I get to play crazy. I basically play Marilyn Monroe, like dressed up like a turkey. It’s sort of like you don’t know what’s going on the whole time until the very end. She tells this whole story about how she burns this chicken and slaps her kid and you don’t know what’s going on. She tells the girl “I’m in love with you.” Basically, they make out and then she gets internalized homophobia and then she beats the s–t out of her and that’s the whole play.

It’s intense. It’s a night of one acts but my theater company is super punk rock crazy and I love it and it’s my art home. So it’s fun! I’m about to start filming Season 3 of Pretty, which I now a series regular in the web series. And then I’m doing Kill Me Deadly, which is my baby – in which Paget has agreed to play the photographer.

Paget Brewster: I get a hat!

KV: It’s a film noir spoof. I’m convinced it’s going to be the next Young Frankenstein. My theater friends decided we’re going to make a movie out of this and we’re going to do it on our terms and you have to be able to – it’s like a theater aesthetic but it’s a movie. It’s all done in black and white and I’m the femme fatale and it’s super funny and there’s music in it. Shemar is in it. I sing in it and it’s crazy. I’m producing that and I’m in it and it’s fascinating and really interesting to learn about all that stuff.

And then we start Criminal Minds, which is amazing because the girls are back. I just wrote a show for the Fringe Festival, a one-person show. I wrote a play called Potential Space that is about vaginas – it has a giant map that looks like Narnia if Narnia was a vagina. And it’s actually not – well it’s got gay boy queer stuff but besides that – that’s going to be done next weekend at the NOTE and then there’s some other things.

I’ve been doing the Vampire Mob. They just released the second episode of season 2 and they just finished filming the second season. So right now I’m currently learning five sets of lines.

AE: So you are doing all kinds of mediums, but it sounds like theater is your first love.

KV: You know the new show Two Broke Girls? [Star] Beth [Behrs]? I’m like, “Why do I know her face? Why do I know her name?” She was the usher when I did Fat Pig at the Geffen, like, four years ago. I just saw her and she was like “Hey, I know you!” I got so emotional because it’s the best because it’s like “I know you, I used to see you at the theater!”

Theater is my first love because I think it’s – I’m a big DIY person and I think it’s the beginning of conversations. We live in a city, in a world where we can create something and the place where anybody can do that. You can do it in your backyard if you wanted to. I do believe those are the unsung heroes – that’s where Bohemia is, that’s where everything starts and I love the web idea because it is the same kind of thing: “We’re going to pack all our stuff up and just do it.”

Kill Me Deadly is a show we’re making a movie because I wanted all of my theater friends who do great work to be union. I think we are going to create a community of people. My hope for is it that it becomes a big deal. We have got so much content, my little troupe of pals and I just want this to be the stepping stone to the next thing and the next thing. I play a very specific character, and I’m happy and I love it, but if I don’t do other projects, I am going to play that part forever.

I would never get cast as the part I play in Kill Me Deadly, I get to do it myself. I get to do that for my friends and my community which is really important to me. I’m one of the freaks. I always – I go to these parties and I get dressed up to go to them and I always feel like I don’t fit in and I don’t ever want to feel like I fit in because I think there’d be something really wrong if I just show up at these things and don’t feel like “You know what? I scratch my nose in the night and my skin is flaking off” and I’ve got dirt stains on these nylons on my ankles so I had to wear boots.

I love being at the beginning of something. That’s why I’ve never been great at having a stylist because it feels like I’m not in that and that’s not me. I’m very much – I’ve always been the kind of actor where I like being a part of it.

AE: So what’s happening for Penelope on Criminal Minds this season?

KV: We’re on episode 3 and I’m working a lot, so I’m really grateful for that. I love the people I work with so it’s so great to be able to be with them because a lot of times, in episodes past when I just work one day and I’m just in my office, I don’t get to see them. And when I do, it’s always like first day of school because they all have inside jokes from last week and I don’t know what’s going on, they’re all trying to catch me up and it’s weird. I love them and so I know that episode 8 is all about Penelope.

It’s just fun. It’s so great to have everybody back and it’s a really good job. It’s kind of weird because I know it now so well and I haven’t done anything this long so it’s Season 7 and so many episodes. I’m so grateful on this train, I will stay on this train as long as the train runs.

AE: Are you excited that AJ and Paget are back?

KV: I love them so much. I’m so excited! It all worked beautifully because Rachel [Nichols] is there, she was wonderful. Now she’s on the cover of Maxim and Conan‘s coming out and I know she’s in Detroit right now doing a movie, and she’s rising like a Phoenix. I always said about those girls, and I meant it and it’s true: They will rise like Phoenixes. In my dreamiest world, I never thought they would be back and now they’re back and because of that break, all these changes happened with them and their characters are different so that’s cool.

AE: You have a girlfriend, right?

KV: Yes – a fiancee. We go back and forth because we don’t know when we’re doing it. I don’t know – everything’s wonderful, there’s no problems so it’s like “Meh.” [shrugs] We don’t know if we’re going to wait until it’s legal but we’re madly in love. We’re about to celebrate our five year anniversary at the end of August.

AE: Congrats! What does she do?

KV: She works with digital cinema. She does a lot of stuff that Penelope Garcia does. She works for technicolor. She does a lot of computer stuff – creating iPhone apps and things like that.

AE: How do you make time to see one another when you’re so busy?

KV: We live together so we see each other. It’s sort of like “When are you feeding the dog? Am I feeding the dog today, or are you feeding the dog?” We make time. Right now, because I’m doing so many things at the same time, it gets a little dicey. And it’s girls, so it’s like “I wanna wrap myself around your kidneys and live there!” It’s good.

AE: Have you ever not gotten a job because of your openness about your sexuality?

KV: I always feel so weird about all that because sexuality is such a weird thing. Clearly, I’m with a woman and I love her and I’m super queer and, at the same time, I can totally appreciate guys.

I totally get there are people that are like “I’m only into guys, I don’t get girls.” That’s not where my Kinsey scale lies. I don’t think I’m bisexual. But I’m very “Whatever!” I find all kinds of people attractive. Do I tend to err on the – do I like my boys with makeup on? Yes I do. Do I tend to like girls whether they have makeup on or not? Yes I do! Am I with a woman? Yes I am. So you can deduce that – “Oh, OK you’re a lesbian.” But I sometimes find myself not bristling about somebody else that says they’re a lesbian, but I was talking to [my partner] Melanie a few weeks ago and she hates “queer.” That’s my favorite word. But she likes lesbian. That isn’t my word. That fits me in such a simplistic way.

So I haven’t found that yet. I feel like that’s my job as an actor – that if I was crazy straight as an arrow, that I think – I hope I could wrap my head around it. I find it fascinating with some people – “Really? You don’t find girls even remotely attractive? Really?” I’m very open with my sexuality and I think that’s one of the prerequisites in being able to play all different things. I’m happy with sexuality, period. However, whatever gets you going. Whatever you do, that’s fine. And I’m on this show and I get to flirt all the time with boys and I get to do a lot of things. Also I stretch my muscles in different kinds of ways. Right now I’m in a play making out with a girl, and at work I mentally make out with Shemar, so I do all kinds of things. No one’s going to care. No one’s saying, “I can’t stop thinking about you with a lady!” That’s not going to happen.

It’s absolutely part of my identity. Melanie doesn’t like to go at all to these kinds of things because I usually have to work, but I know when I’m on the carpet I’m just like, “God I want her to be here so I can hold her hand!” so someone can take a picture of us. I’m with her. And like all the other stuff, it’s just fun to do all those different things. It’s not so weird – everyone’s got their own journey.

Criminal Minds‘s seventh season premieres Sept. 21 on CBS.

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