“I’m most appalled by the misconception that my persona on The Mindy Project is a reflection of my job as a showrunner. People think I just show up and vamp around and wear lipstick and make a couple of pop-culture references, then get in my convertible and drive back to my Barbie mansion.
I, Mindy Kaling, labour over actors’ schedules, and talk to unions about hiring more people of colour, and work on a show that belongs to a corporation that has ventures in other corporate entities, so I have to behave and can’t always be charming and light.
Mindy Lahiri gets away with a lot. She says some incredibly reprehensible things. She is ‘more is more’. She loves bling and all things inappropriate for work. I love fashion, but it’s more about what clothes I dropped on the floor the day before that are clean enough for me to wear to the office.
Mindy Lahiri loves social media. She’s on every platform but has zero followers. Panera Bread tweeted her “Happy birthday” because she tweeted them every day for six months. I’m only on Instagram and Twitter, and I think social media is fun, but not super important.
Mindy Lahiri is invigorated by Donald Trump and thinks the best thing about his résumé is that he came from a reality show. To her, politicians should entertain, so she thinks life under a Donald Trump presidency would be great. I wasn’t crazy about Trump’s impression of an Indian call centre, so I think he should just steer clear of doing impressions altogether.
Mindy Lahiri doesn’t really think about Hillary Clinton. She saw her on Broad City and thought that was cool. I’m very impressed by Hillary. She’s incredibly smart and is by far the candidate that has the best credentials to be president—and I don’t know why that isn’t talked about enough.
The one thing I will say that is true about both Mindys—and maybe the reason Mindy Lahiri wouldn’t vote for Trump—is that reproductive rights are probably the most important thing when deciding whom to vote for, just to make sure that our country isn’t going backward rather than granting freedom to women.
Mindy and Mindy also love boys. Love love love boys, so, yeah, we agree on that, too.”
PS: Did you know Kunal Nayyar is a huge Mindy Kaling fan too?
