While you may know her only as Kelly Kapoor on The Office, Mindy Kaling is one of Tinseltown’s most sought-after comedic writers. Here, she talks about forgiving Woody Allen, why she’ll never have a one-night stand, and the new life strategy she’s adopting as a result of this interview BY JILL SOLOWAY MINDY KALING HAS been a household name since 2005, when she originated the role of chatty customer-service rep Kelly Kapoor on the hit NBC sitcom The Office. But you might not know that this multitalented 32-year-old comedic powerhouse has also written 22 of the show’s episodes, directed 4 of them, and is credited as its co-executive producer. As a fellow TV writer, I’ve known Mindy for years. But we’ve never really had the chance to hang out and talk shop about being funny women making our way in Hollywood—until now. Born Vera Mindy Chokalingam in Cambridge, MA, to Indian immigrant parents, Mindy cut her teeth on comedy as a member of an improv troupe at Dartmouth in the late ’90s. I became aware of her talent a few years later, in 2003, when she was making a splash playing Ben Affleck in a hilarious play she wrote with comedy partner Brenda Withers called Matt & Ben. My group-monologue show, Sit n’ Spin, was at the Aspen Comedy Fest the same year her play was, but we were never together at the right time. Then in 2007, I started a BUST-y feminist nonprofit with my friends called OBJECT, and Mindy performed at one of our Lady Parties as a response to Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens saying that women aren’t funny. We passed each other backstage—again, we were in the same place— but we simply didn’t get the chance to connect.
As more years passed, of course I loved her on The Office. Then I got a delicious new taste of Mindy when I became one of her approximately 1,481,642 Twitter followers. Her tweets are consistently very funny, although I must admit, it did make me a little insecure to know what she was up to. It seemed like she was always having slumber parties with Samantha Ronson and Jordan Rubin and Sofifi, who was Nicole Richie’s best friend. That meant Mindy must know Nicole Richie, which, for me, took her out of the fellow-lady-writer camp and into the fancy-lady stratosphere. I was certain I was in no way cool enough for her—which seems ironic, now that I know the book of personal humor essays she’s busily preparing to debut in November is called Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns). A few months later, I ran into Mindy at Zooey Deschanel’s birthday party (which makes me sound a lot cooler than I am). And then I got the call to interview her. So I went to meet her…a day early. That’s right, I accidentally showed up at the photo studio a full 24 hours ahead of time. I came home. I made turkey meatballs. I went to sleep. Then I woke up and returned to the photo studio where Mindy was dressed in a beautiful blouse and standing in front of some flowered wallpaper, looking much like a flower herself. I was in the right place at the right time. Finally.
PHOTOGRAPHED BY EMILY SHUR STYLIST: MONICA ROSE // MAKEUP: LAVERNE CARACUZZI // HAIR: ALEX POLILLO // SET DESIGN: KEITH ERIC DAVIDSON
40 / BUST // OCT/NOV