We’ve known her as Kelly Kapoor on the NBC sitcom The Office. But Emmy nominated Mindy Kaling — aka Vera Mindy Chokalingam — the star, director, episode writer and producer of The Mindy Project, is also known for her roles in This Is The End, The Five-Year Engagement and as the voice of racer Taffyta Muttonfudge in Wreck-it Ralph.
The Mindy Project, which is running its season 2 on OSN, is known for its excessive body humour. But it’s not something that bothers Kaling.
“Is it?” queried the actress who is recognised by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. “I thought it was New Yorker-style, intellectual. Is that not what we’re doing?... I feel comfortable with it. I’m one of the lucky people that has a great job that I’m somewhat in charge of, and so that gives me a lot of confidence coupled with my weird inner confidence that I’ve had for many years based on nothing, and that just makes it so that I don’t really mind. Also, we’re a network show so, you know, I don’t have that issue where I’m constantly nude or you’re seeing lots of — I love it actually. I think it’s fun, and like actually these two in particular are really open to doing embarrassing stuff”.
The inherent confidence that Kaling, author of the Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) and Matt & Ben, credits to her parents.
“They thought that I could do anything and — yeah, until like – until two days before my mom passed away she was like, ‘Don’t get married if the man is going to tell you not to do things. Just do whatever you want to do’ so I was really lucky because I don’t know how many people really have parents like that.
“At the beginning of the year, I would read everything written about me, all of you guys, and then later it was your subsequent articles about how we can fix the show. You guys all have your opinions about that. Thank you, by the way, for all of those articles. But, you know, the thing about my confidence was something that was written, and I thought am I really that confident? And what I realised, I think, it’s not that I’m especially confident. I’m just — if a man who had my job was comparably confident, no one would particularly think he was confident. It’s just that I don’t make a ton of apologies about what I do day-to-day which I think is surprising to people. Do I care what people think? Yeah, desperately. I’m an actor, insecure, crazy actor at my heart, but I don’t spend a lot of time doing that, and so I think people think I’m extra confident or particularly, but I’m not actually that confident”.
Excerpts:
Q: What are some of the stories that you will be touching on, the fun ones?
Mindy Kaling: Well, we find out what happens to Mindy in Haiti. We started shooting that at the end of the year which was the end of the season. We kind of wrote that and we were like, oh, we have to address it now. It’s challenging and fun.
And then follow my journey back to New York and how that happens. And then there’s my nemesis played by James Franco. That’s one really fun story. We have some other good stuff coming up. I don’t know how much we can say.
And, you know, Mindy gets to be single again pretty soon which is fun.
And it’s funny, you know, the lives of our main cast gets expanded too in a way. Last year, we didn’t get a chance to meet Ed Weeks’ father which is a hilarious character very early in the season and Xosha’s boyfriend Chloe Sevigny came back to shoot with us as Danny’s ex-wife.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about the evolution of the show? How do you guys feel it’s different from the early episodes to where you guys ended up at the end of the first season?
A: Well, I had only come from The Office. Obviously that was the only show I worked on, and I thought that the show would be in large part the structure of an office comedy, and when we started seeing cuts in episodes, we noticed that was a part we loved about the show, but there was this seeing Mindy on dates was really fun, and seeing a person fail at romance in funny ways was enjoyable in a way that we couldn’t really show on The Office because that really wasn’t a part of that show, so that’s probably been the single biggest difference in my opinion.
Q: What did you learn about the cast as you proceeded about strengths that people had that you could sort of play to once you knew what they were, you know, good at?
A: Untapping Chris who we knew was so good, but realising how funny he is especially when the character Danny is under a lot of stress is one of the great joys of shooting the show and writing the show, and that was a fun, unexpected thing is Chris Messina, a handsome New York actor as like comedy engine is really fun.
Q: The finale you got to do one of the great Bridget Jones’, maybe Meg Ryan scenes and with the big reveal with the hair. You haven’t committed to the guy, but you’ve committed to the hair or —
A: So this is a wig right now…
Q: So you haven’t committed to the hair.
A: Yes, which I have loved. I love having the short hair. I think it’s so fun, but my writing staff largely hates it. I was told by one of the writers, Jeremy Bronson, that if I cut my hair off, the show would tank. Is that what he said? He hates it. But I think it’s really fun, and chopping your hair off is something every woman fantasises about doing, and so my actual hair though is actually like down to here (indicating), so I get to have it both ways.
Q: Is she suddenly going to get extensions at some point?
A: I think I’m just going to let it grow out slowly over the first part of the year.
Q: You’ve added Adam Pally to the cast as well. Can you talk about his role on the show and how he’s going to be integrated?
A: Yeah. I went to Dartmouth College, and until now, I have not been able to satirise my favourite kind of Dartmouth character which is a kind of well-educated frat guy who is both congenial and ultra into his frat, and Pally has — we have been a huge fan of his for such a long time. He has a very fun energy but also like kind of exudes warmth in a way that’s kind of rare, and we just kind of love that character, you know, that kind of guy.
Q: You’ve talked a little bit about the evolution of the show away from being strictly a workplace comedy to doing a romantic comedy that centres around the love life of the people in an office. Could you talk a little bit about how the substance of Mindy’s work is going to come up this year? You had some really strong episodes around sex education, you know, Mindy getting to do some deliveries, especially since her — the substance of her work being an OB-GYN is actually sort of connected to being in relationships and looking for a long-term partner. I was just curious what the balance would be there.
A: Tracey Wigfield who started in the show last year and Lang Fisher started this year are both on the writing staff, and we have just lots of funny anecdotes from our own OB-GYNs and things that — you know, actually, Bela Bajaria was the one that pitched this great idea of getting a call on — from one of your patients who was just on spring break who thinks they are pregnant and calls you in the middle of the night like freaking out about that kind of thing, and there’s so many inappropriate and funny and relatable issues that come up with patients which puts Mindy in really funny positions, and we have those stories all through the first — you know, we have broken them up about seven or eight episodes.
Q: You have had so many great guest stars. Will we see any of them again this season like Bill Hader or Seth or any of the other people, and who is your dream guest star you guys haven’t had on yet?
A: Yeah, in our second call sheet — second episode, I was looking at one of our call sheets, it’s Anders (Holm) and (Bill) Hader and (James) Franco and Chloe (Sevigny) are all back in that one episode, and those guys are all obviously coming back.
What I thought was kind of fun and which got way more press than virtually anyone else was when Kris Humphries was playing himself in like one or two scenes. He’s playing himself in a funny situation. He actually has scenes with Chris Messina, and it’s a really funny part.
Q: At the beginning of last season, you said that you almost wanted to be the guy from Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David. Like you didn’t mind if people didn’t like your character, and yet you’re surrounded by these super likeable characters in the ensemble. It felt to me like Mindy got a little less unlikeable toward as the season progressed. Was that conscious? Were you thinking about that?
A: No, as it turns out you shouldn’t be on TV and be like I want to be unlikeable. I mean, that’s one of the things you learn. Unfortunately, if you’re a woman, there are some things people don’t want to see, I don’t want to see, and there’s a sense of protecting a female character that I hadn’t really anticipated, both in terms of protecting them from things and then just not wanting to see them do things. And some of that is bullshit, and we need to stretch what we expect female characters to do and we still do that stuff, and other stuff is just like you just want the lead character who is a doctor to find — who is going to find romance to be someone you respect and does noble acts, and those aren’t like – you know, we all come from comedy cred. We have that side of us. We’re like, no, we should be doing really edgy stuff and our characters should just do whatever, but it’s not that kind of show. So we did — the character has evolved a little bit, I think.
Q: Xosha, is the new kid on the block.
A: Xosha we discovered. I was actually with Charlie Grandy, and Charlie and I received screeners of Precious, and we were like, God, that was an intense movie. And we were like, you know who was really funny in Precious, and no one believed us, but there is this — she was so hilarious. I don’t know if you guys saw Precious.
But she only has two scenes or something in it, but she’s so — she’s so beautiful and funny and bright and bubbly and just kind of pops off the screen. But even Precious, who is in the worst life circumstances since Job, kind of smiles at her and was like I want to be her friend before all the horrible stuff happens to her.
But anyway, we saw her in that, and Charlie and I like — this is what, four years ago — thought this girl is so talented. We didn’t use her on The Office, which was to our advantage.
Q: When you started, were you concerned about having your name, your actual name for the character and on the title? Does it still seem like a good idea a year later that maybe people — you, know does it make it so people can’t draw between the two of you?
A: I think it’s fine. I think there’s no — I don’t think — there’s been no down side certainly.
Q: Where would you like to see your characters go to at the end of the second season or have you mapped this all the way out to her happy ending or does she get a happy ending?
A: You know, I come from a show that lasted for nine years, and so I know that I think as a writer that’s a really long time. It’s hundreds and hundreds of episodes but, yeah, that’s the goal. And I think the cool thing about this show is that if the character were to get married, get divorced, have a kid, be a single mom, the character has such a strong personality, and so do the other characters, that any of those situations are fun. And you ultimately — like, oh, if the character gets too mature , will she not be fun? But she’s never going to get that mature. You are who you are, and she’s not going to grow up too much, and she’s always like one step forward, two steps backwards in her maturity.
