Matthew Gray Gubler's known for being a little eccentric — he lives in a "haunted treehouse" (via Vanity Fair) and wrote a children's book about a monster who wears a banana peel on his head. In fact, he's not above wearing a banana peel on his own head (via Parade). So, it's only fitting that he would play and appreciate a character as eccentric as him, though in a different way. "I like Reid the way he is," Gubler said in 2011 when Assignment X asked if he wanted Reid to grow out of his social awkwardness. "I know they keep on trying to make him kind of cool. I like first-season Reid, he's my favorite [version of the character], sort of the naive Reid."
"Reid to me has always been such a real character," he added. "I'm really so happy with how the writers developed Spencer." In a 2018 interview with Liveabout.com, Gubler said he's unlike Spencer when it comes to the character's genius, but sees similarities in how they both ended up with long-running jobs they didn't seek out. Reid was recruited by the FBI, an option he hadn't considered when pursuing his education. Meanwhile, Gubler himself always envisioned that he'd be behind the camera, rather than in front of it.
"Reid makes the most of it and so do I. It's fun and quite an honor. He's a Ph.D. in physics and mathematics and nobody knows what the third one is and I'm in no way scientifically minded. I think he's way more analytical than I am," Gubler said.
