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Actor and singer Hayley Kiyoko celebrated Halloween weekend by revisiting one of her earliest roles: Scooby-Doo's Velma Dinkley.
On Instagram and Twitter, Kiyoko shared a series of photos of a couples costume featuring herself as Velma and her girlfriend, Becca Tilley, as fellow Scooby-Doo character Daphne Blake. "Jinkies!! Lost my glasses, found my girl," she wrote.
Kiyoko made her professional acting debut as a pair of unnamed characters across two episodes of the Nickelodeon sitcom Unfabulous in 2007. Her very next role was that of the iconic Velma Dinkley in the made-for-television film Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins, which premiered on Cartoon Network on Sept. 13, 2009.
Directed by Brian Levant, The Mystery Begins was the Scooby-Doo franchise's third live-action feature film, following the theatrically-released Scooby-Doo (2002) and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), both of which were directed by Raja Gosnell and written by James Gunn. The 2009 Cartoon Network film served as an origin story, chronicling the very first mystery that Mystery Inc. solved during their high school days.
In addition to Kiyoko as Velma, The Mystery Begins starred Kate Melton as Daphne, The Flash's Robbie Amell as Fred Jones, Nick Palatas as Norville "Shaggy" Rogers and Frank Welker as the voice of Scooby-Doo. The entire main cast reprised their roles for a sequel, Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster, which premiered on Cartoon Network on Oct. 16, 2010.
Girls (Velma) Like Girls
Kiyoko's Halloween "reprisal" of Velma comes not long after Mystery Inc.'s resident bookworm was officially confirmed to be a lesbian in the new animated film Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo. Kiyoko celebrated the news earlier this month. "I remember booking Velma in 2008. It was my first big role in a movie. I also remember thinking 'I wonder if they know they hired a lesbian as Velma' here we are, 14 years later," she tweeted. "[L]ove you all so much." Kiyoko herself publicly came out as gay amid the success of her 2015 single "Girls Like Girls," which she co-directed the music video for.
Kiyoko was the third actor to portray Velma in live-action -- following Linda Cardellini, who played the character in the Raja Gosnell films, and Lauren Kennedy, who played a younger version of Cardellini's Velma in Monsters Unleashed. The role would later be played by Sarah Gilman in the 2018 spinoff film Daphne & Velma.