Upcoming Season 7 Premier Week Chats

The Knights and Ladies of The Criminal Minds Round Table are happy to announce two chats this week to coincide with the highly anticipated Season 7 premiere.

Kirsten Vangsness, our team's technical wizard Penelope Garcia, will join us Tuesdays 09/20 and Executive Producer Erica Messer will be our guest Friday 09/23. We can't wait for two of our favorite ladies to pay us another visit.

Should be a great week for Criminal Minds fans!

CRIMINAL MINDS: Erica Messer Chat

The CMRT chat room has been so fortunate this week to host two Criminal Minds writers! Last night, we had a spur of the moment chat with writer and co-executive producer Erica Messer. What a fun time we have had this week chatting with both Erica and Kim Harrison; both ladies were gracious with their time and were so upbeat and fun to talk with!

Erica was happy to have done so much writing in Season 5 and she gave us some really great episodes. Of course, we can't wait to see what tonight's finale brings! We spoke a little about the Criminal Minds season finale, titled 'Our Darkest Hour', but honestly, we didn't want to be spoiled too much. We did find out that Tim Curry was amazing to work with and is super creepy in this episode. 

We talked a lot about what everyone's favorite episodes were this year and the winner was clearly '100'. Can you guess which part Erica wrote? We're not going to spill the beans just yet! Rumour has it, there will be 15 minutes of extras on the Criminal Minds Season 5 DVD's just for '100' and they will break it down for you!

We discussed each of the episodes Erica wrote in Season 5. Erica talked about how she and Simon Mirren wanted to give Matthew Gray Gubler something "right up his alley" with 'Mosley Lane' and how the episode was "...half our show, half this other world he created." She spoke of how timeless the unsubs from 'Mosley Lane' were. We also discussed this season's casting quite a bit and how the show gets such great guests and what a wonderful casting team Criminal Minds has.

Erica informed us, that even though she wasn't aware of it when she was writing the episode, the car wreck she wrote in 'Retaliation' was one that she had actually been in and she realized that during filming. We talked about how much the characters have grown not only since Season 1 of Criminal Minds, but also within this season. How Hotch and JJ have this closeness now as they are the only working parents on the team and they have both lost someone close. We told Erica how we love to see the girls portrayed in stronger roles and how we love to see them together.

We spoke with Erica and confessed our addiction to Criminal Minds, but said that we were all ok with it. She was ok with it too and said it was healthier than other addictions! We are so glad she understands and keeps giving us great stories to be addicted to... ;-)

You could tell how very much Erica loves what she is doing, writing for a team who is also a family. She was such a joy to talk with. All of our guests here at the CMRT have been wonderful and we are so honored that they have taken time to discuss their work with us. Despite having a short break, I got the impression that Erica was ready to get back to work writing fantastic episodes for Season 6 of Criminal Minds!

Be sure to tune into the Criminal Minds season finale for some "spooky Bernero" directing of Erica Messer's 'Our Darkest Hour' - tonight on CBS!

Thank you again Erica, it was such a pleasure to chat with you!

Criminal Minds Round Table Chat with Kirsten Vangsness and Rick Dunkle

Aka Guess Who’s Learning to Box?










CMRT had a chat today with Criminal Minds’ own Penelope Garcia, Kirsten Vangsness, and Exit Wounds writer Rick Dunkle. Both were very generous with their time and energy and it was a great pleasure to have them stop by for a true Round Table discussion regarding this past Wednesday’s episode and about CM itself.

We spoke to Rick about what it was like to shoot the Alaska scenes so far from the studio. Rick related how that terrific moment at the end between Garcia and Morgan wasn’t working at first. He, Kirsten, Shemar, Charles S Carroll (the director of the episode) and Chris Mundy all sat down at lunch and discussed it. That scene took a total collaborative effort to make it work.

We also told him how much we loved the awesome scene with our ladies. Kirsten told us how much fun that was to shoot and to her, AJ and Paget it wasn’t really like acting at all. There is a genuine closeness there and it comes across on screen, especially in that scene. Kirsten said Paget’s heels were a problem that evening, that there was actually only tissue paper in those bags, and, when asked what she thought Garcia had bought Kevin, she replied “Condoms”.

We had the opportunity to discuss the Season 5 Finale that airs in a couple of weeks. The only thing we were told was that it is “Heartbreaking”. However, we found out something interesting about how Tim Curry came to be cast in the role of our unsub. Tim Curry approached Kirsten Vangsness about the show. Kirsten said, “and he came up to me at the gym- TOTALLY freaked me out said in HIS VOICE ‘I worship at your throne’ and said he wanted to be on the show and when Tim Curry says he wants to be on your show... you tell them.” What a great story!!

But the most shocking thing heard in today’s chat revolved around what Kirsten is doing during her hiatus. Would you believe she is learning to box? How awesome is that? Maybe she’s preparing Garcia to deal with unsubs in the real world instead of in cyberspace.

And then there was the discussion about CM: The Musical!! Fun round table discussion today!! We even had an “honorary knight” today- CMRT invited one of its most loyal supporters, CheetoBreath, to join our chat. We hope to invite more special guests in the future so you too might be able to join us one day.

We’d like to give a big CMRT thank you to our special guests today! Kirsten and Rick were both so delightful and spent well over an hour of their personal time with us. We at CMRT can’t tell them enough how much we appreciate them coming for a visit today and welcome them back anytime.