Mindy Kaling is the multi-talented, likable star of Fox’s The Mindy Project. She’s also a dark-skinned Indian who has never had to whine about how hard it is to gain weight, like Kendall Jenner, and doesn’t have to get naked every episode, like Lena Dunham, to try to prove that overweight women can be beautiful. A popular writer and actress, Mindy is a positive role model for minorities and women of every race who aren’t super thin.
It’s Kaling’s confidence and talent that has drawn fans to her work for years. With season 2 of the show picked up and a variety of other projects in the works, we don’t think Kaling’s star power will fade any time soon. If you’d like to catch up on our interview, check out part 1 of our Mindy q&a HERE.
Do you have plans to write any more books?
Kaling: today I have been like… I’m just going to go look at my computer and stare at an empty page. But even with the show I’ve been jotting down things … essay ideas and things like that. So I’ve been thinking about it kind of in the margins of when I’ve not been working on this.
You are one of the first minority women to be writing, directing and starring in a show on a major TV network. Does that add pressure?
Kaling: It’s something that I think is more interesting to other people than it is to me, only because I’ve only ever lived in my skin and don’t know what it’s like to be anything else. So for me, I forget sometimes, like my trappings of what I look like all the time. But obviously, like everyday something reminds me of it. I try not to think about it because you think it’s pretty interesting and I think that I could get too caught up in that or start to be self-conscious if I let it color how I view things. I’ve been rewarded by that line of thinking and I’m just going to keep doing that. I will say, it is very, very nice when young women, especially women of color or Indian, say that I’m an inspiration or that they never thought that they could do that. That makes me feel really good. If you look to me as a symbol of that, than that’s fantastic.
There’s some weird sexual tension between Dr. Lahiri and Dr. Castellano. Will we ever see that get played out?
Kaling: Well … because the characters are so different from each other, I don’t think either characters have ever dated anyone like that in their personal lives. Every week we have fun new guest stars and everything, and I like thinking of the two of them and those terms, and that’s really fun for our writers to think of that. I think about on The Office, Ed Helms wasn’t even a character until season three, and then he was such a major force of the show. So when I think of the show as a series and the life of the series, I think what if somebody new comes in for Danny, some really funny, great character for him to fall in love with? Or what if someone new like that comes for the Mindy character. You know? It’s one of the things that people talk to me about, so I don’t want to ignore it and at the same time, I just want to see what else is out there since …(the show) is still so young. And of course, I’ve imagined what it was like to kiss Chris, you know…
