Mindy Kaling
Mindy Kaling
Vera Mindy Chokalingam, known professionally by her stage name Mindy Kaling, is an American actress, comedian, and writer. She is the creator and star of the Fox and Hulu sitcom The Mindy Project, and also serves as executive producer and writer for the show. She is also known for her work on the NBC sitcom The Office, where she portrayed the character Kelly Kapoor and served as executive producer, writer and director...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actress
Date of Birth24 June 1979
CityCambridge, MA
CountryUnited States of America
People who are good at stand-up, they sort of seem to have to do it. Something within them makes them have to go on the road.
I once heard that Quentin Tarantino, who I obviously love and think is a genius, says that there's no such thing as guilty pleasure, there's only pleasures. And I do love that idea, because I do think that there's a pretentiousness when people make a list of their favorite things. I like to live a life where I don't think of my pleasures as guilty pleasures.
I think a lot of people compare female writers or female comedians to each other in a way that men are not. Male comedy writers are not scrutinized.
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.
All women love Colin Firth: Mr. Darcy, Mark Darcy, George VI—at this point he could play the Craigslist Killer and people would be like, 'Oh my God, the Craigslist Killer has the most boyish smile!
Writing, at its heart, is a solitary pursuit, designed to make people depressoids, drug addicts, misanthropes, and antisocial weirdos.
I sort of refuse to be an outsider, even though I know that I very much look like one to a lot of people, and I refuse to view myself in such terms.
Also, chubby people can never truly pull off ethereal the same way skinny people can never be jolly.
I think sometimes people think cheerful is a synonym for dumb, so no one is ever cheerful.
If I could make a device where people could just intuit everything you are thinking - a little cable you plug into, like, a USB port, I would make a billion dollars.
I'm someone who loves romance. I always have loved it. Most people who grew up as nerds, as I was, surprisingly, have loved romance.
Sometimes I eavesdrop on people. I could rationalize it - oh, this is good anthropological research for characters I'm writing - but it's basically just nosiness. It also helps me gauge where I'm at: Am I normal?
There wasn't a big tradition of comedy at Dartmouth. More than that, there wasn't really anything artsy going on in Hanover, or even in New Hampshire. The cool thing about the school is that there's nothing for people to watch, so if you were to do a play or a sketch or an improv troupe, it was always packed. There's nowhere else for anyone to go. But there was no comedy.
In junior high, there were a lot of really ugly guys who were popular because they made people laugh. I was like, "Wow, comedy is the great freer of hideous people." It was an incredibly liberating thing. If you ask a girl, "What do you want in a guy?" 99 percent are like, "I just want him to be funny." I thought, "If that applies to women, I'm set.