Vera Mindy Chokalingam (born June 24, 1979), known professionally as Mindy Kaling, is an American actress, comedian and writer.
The Internet also makes it extraordinarily difficult for me to focus. One small break to look up exactly how almond milk is made, and four hours later I'm reading about the Donner Party and texting all my friends: DID YOU GUYS KNOW ABOUT THE DONNER PARTY AND HOW MESSED UP THAT WAS? TEXT ME BACK SO WE CAN TALK ABOUT IT!
Every day, I wake up and I'm like, "Oh, I'm the star of my own show that has my name in it and I get to write it and hire actors that I've loved for such a long time!" It's amazing!
I, like most women, I dress for other women, I think. If I was going to dress for men, I think in general I would be just wearing, like, a fitted black T-shirt and tight jeans every day.
I get so worried about girls with body image stuff And I feel like I have been able to have a fun career and be an on-camera talent and be someone who has boyfriends and love interests and wears nice clothes and those kinds of things without having to be an emaciated stick. And it is possible to do it. In life, you don't have to be that way and you can have a great life, a fun life, and a fulfilling love life.
On 'The Office,' so much of the show is about disguising your true feelings and your romantic feelings because it was a mock documentary.
I'm an A student. I'm addicted to feedback, and I want to please people. That's sort of how I've gotten to where I am.
That's what she said.
When you only do 10 episodes for a final season, every character and all of her interactions in every storyline have so much more import because it's the last time we're going to do it. It's been really helpful saying, "OK, where do we want each of these characters to end?" We have 10 episodes to do it and working backward from that, I kind of envy my friends who have always been on a cable network because this is really that great benefit of doing it this way.
Albums that remind me of my childhood happiness make me incredibly sad now.
Sometimes you just have to put on lip gloss and pretend to be psyched.
I was kind of unfriendly and suspicious of everyone around me. I didn't talk until I was about 15. It's a kind of famous story at my house.
I feel the same way about clothes as I do about food. I want everything.
I know a lot of people think of me and they like, oh that girl is really sexy, that girl is really put together, she would never do something as unladylike as a beet eating competition.
When I was twenty-five, I went on exactly four dates with a much older guy whom I'll call Peter Parker. I'm calling him Peter Parker because the actual guy's name was also alliterative, and because, well, it's my book and I'll name a guy I dated after Spider-Man's alter ego if I want to.
The way that TV is set up is very helpful for when a show comes to an end because as an actor, you've got acting, but as a showrunner you still get to edit for three months and after that ends you get to do a sound mix. So, as a writer-performer in television, it's a very nurturing, gradual environment to say goodbye to a show.
Catharsis isn't art. You can't rely on catharsis to get a laugh. Because guess what? People do laugh when something's shocking, but that is, to me, the absolute fakest of laughs. That's not something that sustains a television series, or a movie, or even 45 minutes of a stand-up set at Carolines.
What Mindy has in common with a lot of women in their mid-30s is that she's obsessed with marriage. It's the entire premise of the 'The Mindy Project'. The pilot is her wanting to get married and her ruining her ex-boyfriend's wedding. For someone who fetishizes marriage so much, we're like, "OK, let's give it to her and let's see if it's as good as she thinks it's going to be. " That's been the fun of the beginning part of this season is showing her what the challenges are of being married.
Almost every college playwright or sketch or improv comedian was sort of aware of Christopher Durang - even kids in high school. His short plays were so accessible to younger people and I think that was inspirational to me.
My parents were supportive of my creativity but did not have a lot of patience for whimsy with zero production value. They had stuff to do.
We have this saying, and it's been very useful when a series, 'The Mindy Project' goes for longer than a hundred episodes, which is Mindy character can never get what she wants when she wants it. We enjoyed it because it felt very real to her character to make a big impulsive move and it seems like she has everything, this instant family, a guy she loves and then there's a moment of panic.