In eight seasons working on The Office, overachiever and admitted overthinker Mindy Kaling flourished as a writer, producer, director and performer. She got a chance to share a voice all her own with The Mindy Project — a romantic comedy with an underdog heroine — playing a doctor partly inspired by her own OB/GYN mother.
In January of 2012, on the same day that Kaling received the pilot pickup for her series, her mother passed away after a long battle with cancer. But not before bearing witness to her daughter's ascent from romantic comedy-loving teen to off-Broadway actress, to writer and producer on a hit NBC comedy, and finally to the creator of a self-titled series.
The Mindy Project aired on Fox for three seasons, before being picked up by Hulu, where it stayed for an additional three years. In this 2012 cover story for emmy magazine, Kaling — widely credited as the first woman of color to create and star in her own show — shares her journey to success.
It's just past nine on a Wednesday morning, and Mindy Kaling has already put in half of an average person's workday.
Up at four-thirty, the former costar of The Office paced the floors of her Spanish-style Los Angeles home, brainstorming story ideas for The Mindy Project, the promising new Fox comedy she not only stars in but also created, writes and executive produces. By seven-thirty, she was on the Universal lot looking every inch the chic, polished boss in a little black dress, Helmut Lang leather jacket and a favorite pair of Elizabeth and James heels to run a production meeting, and by ten-thirty, she'll be firmly ensconced in the writers' room, dreaming up more ideas with her staff until at least eight p.m.
Pretty impressive for a self-confessed world-class procrastinator adept at such disparate distractions as breaking down cardboard boxes for recycling and YouTubing Beyoncé-loving toddlers.
That was the old Mindy. The new Mindy has the mental discipline of an Olympic athlete. or at least it seems that way to a visitor on this particular summer day.
The woman known to Office fans as baby-voiced, gossip-loving customer-service rep Kelly Kapoor is so focused on her all-consuming new gig that she hasn't had time to properly decorate her sun-streamed corner office. Save for framed snapshots of her parents and two best friends, a Dunder Mifflin throw pillow and a pair of pictures of actor–current celeb crush Chris Evans (which appear to have been ripped out of a magazine and are taped to the wall), Kaling's office remains largely devoid of personal touches.
"I was worried about not getting enough sleep," she admits of her demanding schedule, which would only grow more intense once the show started production in late July. "But so far, it's not an issue. When you're a woman who has her own show, sleep becomes a lot less interesting than when you're awake. I hate sleep right now."
Kaling's palpable excitement and nervous energy are understandable. After eight seasons as a supporting player on The Office, the NBC comedy for which she also was a writer, producer and occasional director (and Primetime Emmy–nominated six times in her various producing and writing roles), this quadruple threat is taking the lead on virtually all aspects of The Mindy Project.
The series revolves around Mindy Lahiri, a successful OB-GYN who, after a humiliating arrest on the night of her ex-boyfriend's wedding, decides to take a more mature approach to her life. Which proves difficult for the doc, who approaches relationships as if she were the Meg Ryan character in a classic romantic comedy.
Being at the center of this Project is an opportunity Kaling still can't quite believe. "I had more lines in the [Mindy] pilot," she says, "than i think i did in all eight seasons of The Office!"
Leaving behind the comfort and security of a hit series to launch her own is a risk. Kaling may have appeared in a handful of hit films like No Strings Attached and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and boast an enviable Twitter following of more than 1.7 million, but she's not yet a household name. If strong early buzz is any indication, though, Mindy could very well transform Kaling into a Hollywood A-lister the same way, say, 30 Rock did for fellow multi-tasker Tina Fey.
Kaling's friends insist that she's ready — eager, even — to step into the white-hot media glare. "She likes her name in lights," says B.J. Novak, Kaling's close friend, fellow Office writer–producer–costar and an executive producer on the Mindy pilot. Which is why, for her birthday in June, he had her moniker placed on the marquee of an L.A.–area Shakey's pizza.
"No one there knew what kind of name that was," he quips. "I had to correct their spelling, [which] was funny because a block away was a billboard for The Mindy Project."
The Fox marketing department is working overtime to spread the word about Mindy, which premieres September 25 in the plum slot behind last season's femme-centric breakout New Girl.
"I believe she's a superstar," says Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly, a supporter of Kaling's since he was chief at NBC, where he was instrumental in nurturing The Office. "She's already got a following, both men and women like her and she's got something to say. Now [the task] is just broadening that appeal and having more people join the party, and I think they will. I'm thrilled she's over here with us."
She almost wasn't. Mindy was originally developed at NBC, but the network had given early orders to several comedy pilots with female leads and ultimately passed on Kaling's script. Fortunately, Bela Bajaria, executive vice-president at the network's sister studio, Universal Television, was a fan. The studio was committed to a return to producing for outside networks, and Bajaria seized the opportunity to place the show.
"We looked across town at Fox and New Girl and said, 'Wow, that would be such a great home for it. We should really take a shot,'" Bajaria remembers. "In that moment in time, it was the right piece of material. Mindy has such a fresh, distinctive voice, a very contemporary, relevant point of view, and that's so hard to find."
Once Kaling got over the initial sting of being passed over by the network she'd long called home, she was thrilled to reunite with Reilly. "Right now, everything for the show is going so perfectly," she says, "that it makes me feel anxious. I'm always nervous when i don't feel like the underdog."
The heroine at the center of The Mindy Project is an underdog her creator hopes everyone can root for. "I wanted guys to watch the show," Kaling says. "Or at least if their girlfriends made them watch it, they'd decide, 'That's actually pretty funny.'"
To that end, Mindy — a rom-com at its core — has several distinct male characters, like Danny (The Newsroom's Chris Messina), a cocky doc with working-class roots and a Bruce Willis–in–Moonlighting edge, and Jeremy (British actor-writer Ed Weeks), an unapologetic lothario whom Mindy finds difficult to resist. "Romantic comedies now are so [often] about outfits, makeovers and good-looking leads running through the city," she says. "I thought it'd be great to do a show where the level of comedy was equal to the level of romance and yearning."
Not surprisingly, the single-camera-comedy Mindy cannily resembles the real-life Mindy. Both are hard-core rom-com fans. ("It's something I love in earnest, but I can also make fun of mercilessly," she says. "It's the two sides of my brain.") And both are smart, accomplished single women who spend a lot of time thinking and talking about finding the right guy and starting families.
But the show is also heavily influenced by Kaling's late mother, Swati Chokalingam, an OB-GYN with a sharp sense of humor, a mad love for fashion and an adventurous spirit who, in her mid-twenties, moved from her native India to Nigeria on her own to practice medicine before eventually settling in the States. "She had a pretty exciting and kind of dramatic professional life," Kaling reports. "My mom really did gift me this world, which I love."
Sadly, on the same day in late January that Reilly called to deliver the good news that Fox was picking up the pilot, Kaling's mother lost her battle with pancreatic cancer. Those who know Kaling best are grateful this particular Project got the green light when it did; the show has proved to be a productive way of working through her still-raw grief.
"The timing [is] almost worth reading into," Novak says. "I mean, it really was the moment that her mom passed away that her show was picked up, and the show is a tribute to her mom. Mindy's channeling herself, but what she would be like as her mom."
"I think about her all the time," Kaling says softly. "I feel closer to her because [of] the show." As someone who considers herself "basically an atheist," Kaling says she's been "surprised at how our relationship has continued, even though she's not here. I do, in a way, believe that my mom is always around."
Growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Vera Mindy Chokalingam was the youngest of a tight-knit clan that also included architect father Avu and older brother Vijay.
From an early age, she was the kind of kid any parents would be proud of — particularly immigrant professionals who, she says, strongly believed "you can do anything you want in America if you work hard."
Studious and responsible, the teenage Kaling didn't attend "a single party with alcohol at it," she writes in her best-selling 2011 memoir Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns). "No one offered me pot. It wasn't until I was sixteen that I even knew marijuana and pot were the same thing. I gleaned it from a syndicated episode of 21 Jump Street."
Kaling's entertainment diet also included countless hours of Kids in the Hall and Saturday Night Live reruns, which nurtured her growing obsession with comedy, though she insists she was hardly considered most likely to succeed in Hollywood. In school plays, she was always an extra, never the lead.
"I always loved performing," she says, "but i was not one of those outgoing, confident kids who are instantly watchable."
That changed at Dartmouth College, where she acted in — and wrote — plays, sang in an a cappella group and crafted a cartoon for the student newspaper. "I kind of killed it in college," Kaling writes in her book. "You know that saying 'big fish in a small pond'? I was freakin' Jaws in a community swimming pool."
Bolstered by that success, she moved to New York City with two close college friends upon graduation, intent on writing comedy. Two years and several dead-end day jobs later, she made a decision that would become a hallmark of her career: if no one would give, as she puts it, "a comic-minded, chubby Indian woman" the opportunity to write and perform, Kaling would create the opportunity for herself.
With roommate Brenda Withers, she created Matt & Ben, a fictional sixty-minute play about the young Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, in which the finished script for Good Will Hunting literally lands at their feet. Kaling played Affleck; Withers was Damon. The offbeat comedy enjoyed a sold-out off-broadway run and received rapturous national press attention from the likes of Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone.
Kaling still looks back fondly on the experience. "Besides playing Mindy [in The Mindy Project], playing Ben Affleck was my most favorite role. The character had these sensitivities that were just a dream as a writer and actor, and they weren't the same insecurities that I, as a woman, would have. This guy was really comfortable in his skin and his body. It was so freeing."
Thanks to that success, Kaling and Withers landed a pilot deal with The WB for a semi-autobiographical comedy called Mindy & Brenda. That project fizzled, but a meeting with writer-producer Greg Daniels — who'd caught Matt & Ben and was looking for writers for his NBC adaptation of the U.K. hit series The Office — ignited her TV career.
"She was extremely nervous," Daniels recalls of that two-and-a-half-hour sit-down. "I kept her there a long time in an attempt to get her to relax. I was certainly trying to be warm and charming, although she [later] described it as sitting with a silent, dour farmer."
While Daniels was sufficiently impressed to hire Kaling, she insists she struggled in the show's early days, consumed with worry that her inexperience would get her fired. Instead, she flourished, not only behind the scenes — where she was ultimately promoted to executive producer — but in the role of Kelly Kapoor, which Daniels created for her.
"She wasn't to be believed when she said she didn't know what she was doing," says Novak, who played Kelly's on-and-off boyfriend, Ryan. "But she really didn't think she did. She still often doesn't know how good she is."
Novak and Kaling bonded almost immediately, though their off-screen relationship — not unlike the on-screen one — has been bumpy at times.
"We'd be in the writers' room having just vicious arguments," Novak says, "[using] the kind of fierce words and tempers that end a marriage."
About what? "Who the f--k knows?" he says with a laugh. "What to order at lunch. How Michael Scott [Steve Carell's character] should leave the show. Anything. But thirty seconds later, we'd be agreeing to work on something together."
Frank professional relationships have become another hallmark of Kaling's career. In her book, she details a particularly heated battle with the famously patient Daniels during the third season, when he kicked her out of the writers' room. (Daniels verifies the account.)
While many celebs would shy away from committing such an incident to print, Kaling didn't hesitate. "I consider Greg to be a very close friend," she says. "But i think we wouldn't have been as close as we are without having a candid relationship. I respect him so much."
Especially now, with her own TV baby, which she is executive producing with Howard Klein (The Office, Parks and Recreation) and Matt Warburton (The Simpsons). "I'm able to see how difficult Greg's job was," she says, "especially at the very beginning, to encourage new writers to contribute but to also shut down a line of conversation if it's not helping."
But she doesn't expect to be the same sort of boss. "I'm not gonna sit there and embolden writers to have screaming fights with me about my show," she says with a laugh. "It's my show!"
For his part, Daniels is confident that his onetime protégé can handle the dual demands of running her own series and starring in it.
"She was able to juggle writing, producing, acting and directing on The Office, so she has had some experience with it," says Daniels, who will work with Kaling again on the NBC comedy when she returns for two episodes to give Kelly Kapoor a proper send-off. "Mindy is so bright that she learns as fast as an alien or mermaid in a movie who picks up English from watching an hour of TV."
Even those just getting to know her are impressed. "Her work ethic is incredible," says Mindy leading man Chris Messina. "I have no doubt she'll be able to do everything for the show — and probably write another book and a movie at the same time."
The only thing missing from this pivotal moment in Kaling's career is a certain seal of approval.
"My mom didn't get a chance to see the show," she says wistfully. "She was my absolute best friend, and I would always ask her [opinion], like before I [bought] a dress for the Emmys, I'd take a photo and send it to her. And if she didn't like it, she'd tell me instantly. But I kind of knew what she'd think already.
"It's kind of a selfish thing to think when someone is so sick, but i asked her, 'Who will help me make decisions about things?'" continues Kaling, brushing away tears. "And she said something which is completely true: 'We're so lucky that we know each other so well because you will always know what i think, even if I'm not there to say it.'"
She knows Dr. Swati Chokalingam would be excited for her daughter. And she's sure she would be proud. She's also certain that, thanks to her mother, she's got plenty of material to draw on should she be fortunate enough to pen years' worth of episodes.
"Aaron Sorkin is such a genius, but I always think about how much research he has to do on The Newsroom," Kaling says. "The great thing about my show is, I just have to think back to memories."
This article originally appeared in emmy magazine issue #4, 2012, under the title, "Thinking Allowed."
