Mindy Kaling is the guest of this episode of Hollywood Reporter‘s Awards talks The podcast — which was recorded Thursday in front of an audience at the Newport Beach Television Festival, where Kaling was honored with the festival’s Breakthrough Artist Award — is a prolific writer, director, producer and actress who has proven herself to be one of the most talented and influential creative voices of her generation.
The 46-year-old actress first came to prominence as a writer and supporting actress — playing perky customer service representative Kelly Kapoor — on NBC’s hit series. The office From 2005-2012. Only 24 years old and the only woman in the writer’s room when she started, she eventually wrote more episodes of the series than any other writer, and in 2010, she became the first woman of color to be nominated for an Emmy in any writing category.
She later created and starred in her own show, Mindy Projectwhich ran on Fox from 2012 to 2015 and then Hulu from 2015 to 2017. She was the first woman of color to create, write, and star in her own network show, and the show was the first network television series to have a lead Indian-American character.
She later co-created Netflix I’ve never done that before (2020-2023) and HBO Max Sexual life of college girls (2021-2025), and created Hulu’s Not suitable for work (it dropped last week and is currently the platform’s most-watched show), in which she did not act, and which she describes as a semi-autobiographical trilogy; He co-created Netflix Running point (2025-), a series about the owner of a professional basketball team (Kate Hudson), the second season of which generated significant Emmy Award buzz.
Kaling was described by Marie Claire As the “defining voice of first-generation Asian Americans” and by The Guardian As one of the most powerful women on television. It’s also a New York Times Named best-selling author timeThe 100 Most Influential People in the World were honored with the Producers Guild of America’s Norman Lear Award for Television Achievement, and former President Joe Biden awarded the National Medal of Arts.
Here are some of Kaling’s highlights Awards talks Interview at Napa Valley Television Festival.
Things you are proud of
“The things I’m most proud of in my career are the things that seem so weird, and most people have said to me, ‘Don’t do that, I don’t understand it!'” One of them plays Ben Affleck. Matt and Ben Off Broadway in New York [in 2002]. You can’t imagine how many people have told me this is a waste of time. …The other is that I did the show I’ve never done that beforeand I had the idea to have John McEnroe as the narrator of the show because he was nervous and so was the young American Indian hero, who is 15 years old. I think those are the things I’m most proud of.
Her ‘worst experience’ turned out to be ‘the best thing that ever happened to me’
“I’ve had some bad experiences in Hollywood, but this was the worst [The WB] I loved the idea of a show based on our friendship[her and Brenda Withers, her college friend who I co-wrote with]. [herandBrendaWithershercollegefriendwithwhomsheco-wroteMatt and Ben]but they didn’t want us to play the main roles. So we had to write the show, and then we had to audition against other actors who were much better than us, for our show. After that, we weren’t cast, so we had to produce a pilot for the series with two very beautiful and talented actresses, but that didn’t work out. But not doing that show — not doing the pilot — was the best thing that ever happened to me, because I wouldn’t have been able to write about it The office If so.”
Why did you start playing Kelly Kapoor? The office
“When I was hired in The office As a writer, I was happy to do that. Of course, there was a part of me that looked up to John Krasinski and P.J [Novak]who was a writer/performer, thinking like, “Oh, this is going to be great!” I was hired as a writer, but there was a clause in my contract that said I could be used as a performer. Honestly, I didn’t even know about this clause, and my agent at the time didn’t tell me about it. But the great thing about him The office Was it… Because it was a mockumentary, and it was based on famous and amazing British works officeeveryone should look very natural. I was like, “I sure look natural!” We were working on the first season and it was the second episode. My friend PJ wrote this episode called “Diversity Day,” where Michael had to offend people, and it wasn’t funny if the room was white; There were bound to be some minorities who felt deeply offended. In that case, Greg [Daniels, the showrunner] He was like, “Okay, can you get on camera and be one of the people in the office?” And if it had been any other show, I don’t know that NBC would have approved it, but on this show, where we look like people you might already know, they were like, “Yes, she can do it.” So, I got Taft-Hartley, and I got to be Kelly in that second episode [famously smacking Michael]”.
“A gift from my mother” on the day she died
“One of the strangest days of my life, to this day, is Matthew [Fox TV chief] Kevin Reilly called me to tell me that my program[[Mindy Project]Captured. It was the day my mother died, and he called me while I was in the hospital. This was a gift. For anyone whose immediate family member had died, the gift was not only professionalism, but also the ability to think about something else. Being able to help my dad with all the things you have to do after someone dies, but also being able to be like, “Okay, I have to hire a cinematographer” and “Who is the director that can do this?”[[Choking shp]I really, to this day, think that was a gift from my mom, and it helped me through that time, because we were so close.
On importance Mindy Project
“I’ve lost a lot of weight since then, but at the time, I was a size 10 or 12, dark-skinned Indian woman starring in a romantic comedy show. … I went into that show with the skills I learned from it. The officeBut I finally got to do the thing I want to do, which is romantic comedies. And I got to do the other thing I wanted to do, which was have the loop be more than two lines long.
Service – and scrutiny – by the American Indian community
“My community is very hungry for any kind of representation, so there’s a lot of pressure on that. If you show a certain type of Indian person and they have different traditions than the type of Indian person that those people knew and grew up with, that’s disappointing. So I’ve had to deal with that for 20 years of my career, and I can’t say it’s easy, but I will say that the same group of people who scrutinize me the most are also the ones who ride in my cars.” So getting it right, especially for people in my community, is really important to me, but I feel angry at them — I feel like they’re my family, where I’m angry with them as well, and I wish they had some sense, or more, of what it took to get this far, and I think there are some things that have been scrutinized that my fellow show creators don’t necessarily have to deal with.
Inspiration for Not suitable for work
“Since the beginning Mindy Project [which she made throughout her 30s]I was so consumed — I’d set up at 6 a.m., finish at 10 p.m., and go home — that I don’t have many memories. I will see memes or pictures and it will bring back memories that I completely forgot. The time in my life is most alive when i was no I was successful, but I only had big dreams, had no access to anything, and went to bed every night worrying that it would never happen. I wanted to fast forward to now, the time in my life when I was successful and everyone thought I was cool and smart and had something to say. I would go to sleep at night in Brooklyn, in our apartment on the railroad, and think, “Is this ever going to happen?” Why is life so slow? and [so, recently] I wanted to do a show about that time. I see a lot of shows on TV about people in their twenties who are lazy and wee They lie to each other and don’t have a lot of career ambitions, but that’s not the case for the Gen Z people I know who work on my shows. There’s this characterization that there’s a generation of “screen photographers” who just want to cancel people online and not go to work, and I didn’t find that to be the case, so I wanted to make a show about that.
On writing itself in the corner Running point
“Netflix has a lot of shows in development, and they want a big hit, and they want a lot of people to watch it — it’s a business. So, at the end of each season, we try [write ourselves into a corner] – And by the way, they taught us this, because they also support us and want the show to go on, but they say, “Try to make as many stunts as you can.” [as you can].’ Did you know that when you’re watching a show on Netflix, and it’s coming to an end, and some crazy stuff happens, and you’re like, “Okay, now I gotta watch the next one”? This is on purpose — it’s a sales tool to keep you immersed. And so, we did that — but, by the way, we learned that in I’ve never done that before [another Netflix show]. When we started doing it, we said, “Oh, we can’t tie everything neatly at the end of the episode, they’ll switch channels, they’ll be on HBO Max in two seconds, so we have to tie them into a crazy cliffhanger at the end of the episode.”
