By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Private Policy and Terms of Use.
Criminal Minds star Kirsten Vangsness, who plays the lovably quirky tech nerd goddess Penelope Garcia on the hit procedural, stopped by CBS’ The Talk to chat about a myriad of subjects including speaking candidly about her instant, visceral attraction to her fiancée Melanie Goldstein.
Shifting gears from Vangsness instructing the women of The Talk on the art of appreciating fine desserts and talk of her upbringing as a thrift store baby Sharon Osborne asked the actress about how she had a boyfriend when she met Goldstein, who would become her partner.
“Tell me everything,” Osborne eggs Vangsness on. “I want to know every minor detail.”
And Vangsness is happy to oblige. “So, I had the boyfriend – love, love, love –met the girlfriend at a birthday party and I remember shaking her hand and thinking ‘Oh, expletive,” Vangsness says. “Everything changed. Everything got all weird and fuzzy. It took me a year to break up with the boyfriend, it took us two and half years to get together…”
Sarah Gilbert, who’s a lesbian, chimed in and asks, “Why’d it take that long?”
Because I think I was confused,” Vangsness replies. “You don’t choose what gender you are going to be able to fall in love with in sort of like a holistic way in terms of spiritually, physically, emotionally… I loved my boyfriend. I loved him.”
Gilbert presses on asking Vangsness if perhaps she wasn’t in love with her boyfriend but Vangsness explains that she was and that everything with Goldstein was essentially just more-than.
“I think I was in love with him but in terms of what I felt for her, so immediately and a game changer and in a completely different way than I’d ever felt for a guy. That’s who I, in a more holistic way, have a magnetic thing for…”
The Criminal Minds fan favorite explained that it’s not as though she doesn’t find men attractive, singling out her sex symbol costar Shemar Moore and sending the panel into a series of “oohs and ahs” over him.
Vangsness, who too rarely appears in interviews -- in our opinion--says she essentially had a blast on The Talk. “I was crazy-scared before the show," Vangsness told SheWired about her appearance. "But then I got out there on the set and the hosts had such terrific energy that it turned out to be really super-fun.”
Here’s Vangsness in her own words.
Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP, Executive Producer of Entertainment for the Advocate Channel. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.
Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP, Executive Producer of Entertainment for the Advocate Channel. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.
