‘Veronica Mars’
returns with Kristen Bell in new Hulu episodes
It’s never really over until it’s over ... and it still isn’t over yet for “Veronica Mars.”
The cult-favorite mystery series that made Kristen Bell a star followed its three-season UPN/CW run with a Kickstarter-funded movie seven years later, and now – 15 years after it first appeared – it returns with new episodes that Hulu begins streaming Friday, July 26. In what effectively is Season 4 of the show, Veronica probes lethal attacks in her California town of Neptune during spring break, complicated by the area’s social classes’ struggle between profit and safety.
As was the case with the movie, creator and executive producer Rob Thomas has regathered much of the original cast including Enrico Colantoni (alias Veronica’s private-eye father Keith), Jason Dohring (Logan), Percy Daggs III (Wallace), Francis Capra (Weevil), Max Greenfield (Leo), Ken Marino (Vinnie Van Lowe) and Ryan Hansen (Dick Casablancas). Oscar winner J.K. Simmons, Patton Oswalt, Dawnn Lewis and Mary McDonnell (“Major Crimes”) are newcomers to the saga.
“I’m grateful for this longevity,” co-star Colantoni reflects. “I always say that the more time you spend with a character, the better you are at playing that character. Knowing and revisiting these people, it just makes going to work so much better and so much richer. I’m sure that if someone had told us 15 years ago this would be happening, it would be really hard to believe. Well, maybe not for Rob; he’s the perpetual optimist.”
Much as Veronica remains who she’s always been, the pleasant Colantoni takes pride in being able to apply the same view to the actress who plays her: “There’s nothing apathetic or lazy about Kristen Bell. She comes to work and she’s ready to dance, and her life is so much bigger than it was 15 years ago ... not only with her celebrity and her fame, but with her family life, managing two children. She is a busy, busy person, but she has all the energy in the world. I don’t know how she does it, but I’ve never seen her with her eyes closed between set-ups.”
Also a director now (with “iZombie” episodes among his credits), former “Flashpoint” star Colantoni admits that he can’t predict whether more “Veronica Mars” is in the cards, especially given the franchise’s history.
“Rob Thomas has a vision for this woman,” he says, “and as long as females can exist as the way of the world, I believe him. Rob always thought the fatherdaughter relationship was the heart of the show. I can reference things like ‘Frasier,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah! I’ll do that. Give me an old chair to sit on, and I’ll live the rest of my life playing that guy.”