Mindy Kaling sat down for a Paley Media Council Series conversation on Thursday, touching on her two-decade career in Hollywood and what she wants to do next.
The star, who got her start as a writer and supporting actress on The Office, said her original goal was “if I could just be a staff writer on even a terrible show, even if I could just be in the WGA and have health insurance and live in Los Angeles, I would be happy for the rest of my life.” As she became more successful, though, she wanted to produce and be No. 1 on the call sheet, admitting her idea of success “keeps changing and so I’m never happy, and that’s the writer’s disease.”
What got her on The Office in the first place was a play she wrote in 2002 called Matt & Ben, where “I played Ben Affleck and [her friend Brenda Withers] played Matt Damon in a fictionalized version of a time of strife in their relationship, with a creative difference. It was them writing Good Will Hunting and it takes place over a course of like one day in their lives,” Kaling explained. The Office creator Greg Daniels saw the play and hired her a result.
Kaling joked, “Ben Affleck is to this day the most fun role I’ve ever played,” and years later the two know each other a bit, as she revealed of his reaction to the piece, “For the record, he’s not like crazy about it. He’s like such a good sport but he had a Christmas party a couple of years ago and I remember going, and he’s like, ‘You still owe me residuals from that play you did.’ But he’s nice — I would have sued.”
During the conversation at the Beverly Wilshire hotel, Kaling also touched on the decision to keep her production company Kaling International smaller — “I’m obviously very envious and have so much admiration for Shonda [Rhimes] and J.J. [Abrams] with Bad Robot and Shondaland, where they have these big companies and this big infrastructure that can make all these things, but I think that works better in drama” — and how she chooses which entertainment companies to partner with, admitting, “I think it’s pretty simple, which is, who can pay the most?”
“Here’s my thing. I have worked on many different platforms and it’s not just about the money, but more often than not, the money represents real enthusiasm. Sometimes it doesn’t; sometimes I’ve done stuff for less money because the people seem so excited, like on the Zoom after the pitch,” Kaling continued. “The problem is that people are switching their jobs quickly that for me, I don’t think there’s been an instance where the person I sold a show, to that team has stayed intact for two years. Executives are moving constantly up and so to me, I never get too married to a creative team.”
After having recently wrapped up Never Have I Ever and The Sex Lives of College Girls, and in the middle of working on the second season of Running Point, Kaling also weighed in on returning to acting after six years away. She said she’s decided against joining the casts of her recent shows, joking, “Never Have I Ever, a show literally about an Indian American family in Southern California, and if I wasn’t on that — what’s wrong with me? I think there is a part of me that feels a little superstitious. I’m like, these seem to have gone well and I’m not in them so maybe I’ll wait.”
But, she added, “I miss it, and I would like to write or co-create a show for me to act in soon.” She doubled down later in the chat, noting that on The Mindy Project when she was the lead and also the creator, “it is unbelievably fun and it’s so efficient. I would love to do that again…that’s the thing that maybe in the next couple years, when I launch a couple other things that are earlier in the pipeline, that would be something that would be fun to do again.”
