More Reasons We Want To Hang Out With Mindy Kaling

By Irin Carmon  |  September 20, 2010 | 11:38pm
Latest

“I’ve led kind of an interesting life, and I drink and party and I am funny and have a good group of friends,” says Mindy Kaling. “I wonder, why isn’t that on TV or in the movies?” It will soon.

Our love for Mindy Kaling is well-documented (and the feeling is mutual!), and her new interview with New York magazine just amplifies it. She manages to be a witty observer without being mean-spirited, and self-aware without being self-indulgent. She says she doesn’t really care whether people liked her Emmy dress or not: “I have a thick skin, which comes from being a not-really-skinny, dark-skinned Indian woman. I haven’t fit in every place, and so I’m kind of used to resistance.”

And yet she’s gotten plenty of well-deserved affirmation, including from Kaling’s Office colleague B.J. Novak, who says she “has long been considered the best writer on The Office,” and that each actor thinks she writes their character best. High praise, though she’s also talking openly about moving on after her contract is up.

That’s because she’s got bigger things afoot, including a book of humorous essays (about which she worries that she has “no transformative summers in Nantucket or whatever”) and a romantic comedy called The Low Self Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie.

She unabashedly loves romantic comedies (though we can’t really get on board with her You’ve Got Mail adoration) but also critiques them:

“Why do all the women have to be klutzes? All these pretty women with no discernible flaws, so let’s make them a klutz! Or what about all the skinny women shoving food in their mouth on dates? It would be so much funnier if the women weren’t skinny. That’s a great Onion headline: ‘Actual Fat Woman Shoves Food in Her Mouth in Romantic Comedy.’ ”

Well, could the actual fat woman have a shot at love without losing a lot of weight first? Maybe if Mindy’s directing. There is, however, the risk of expecting Kaling to singlehandedly save us from Hollywood crap — an awfully tall order for a 31-year-old coming up in the world, who will have to negotiate commercial compromises like every promising talent.

But maybe she’ll amass enough power to make her own way. She actually identifies with Woody Allen:

“I have that same feeling-that there’s nobody that looks like me in movies, nobody would cast me as a romantic lead, but I want to do it and I feel confident that I can.”

May Mindy have a long, long career of writing and directing movies in which she casts herself across younger, hotter dudes. But may she stay funny and may none of her sex scandals be creepy.

The Funny Side of Love [NYM]
Earlier: Mindy Kaling Likes Us!

 
Join the discussion...