Mindy Kaling
Vera Mindy Chokalingam[1] (born June 24, 1979),[1][2] known professionally as Mindy Kaling (/ˈkeɪlɪŋ/), is an American actress, comedian, screenwriter, and producer.[3] Known for her extensive work on television, she has received numerous accolades including two Screen Actors Guild Awards and a Tony Award, and six Primetime Emmy Awards nominations. She was recognized by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2013 and was awarded the National Medal of the Arts from US President Joe Biden in 2022.[4][5]
Mindy Kaling
- Actress
- comedian
- writer
- producer
2002–present
3
- Stand-up
- television
- film
- books
She first gained recognition starring as Kelly Kapoor in the NBC sitcom The Office (2005–2013), for which she also served as a writer, executive producer, and director.[6] For her work on the series, she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series. She gained wider attention for creating, producing and starring as Dr. Mindy Lahiri in the Fox/Hulu semi-biographical sitcom The Mindy Project (2012–2017), that was inspired by some events in her early life. She then expanded her career creating numerous shows such as the NBC sitcom Champions (2018), the Hulu miniseries Four Weddings and a Funeral (2019), the Netflix comedy series Never Have I Ever (2020–2023) and the HBO Max comedy series The Sex Lives of College Girls (2021–present).[7]
Her film career includes voice roles in Despicable Me (2010), Wreck-It Ralph (2012), and Inside Out (2015) as well as live action roles in No Strings Attached (2011), The Five-Year Engagement (2012), A Wrinkle in Time and Ocean's 8 (both 2018), and Late Night (2019), the last of which she also wrote and produced. She wrote two memoirs both reaching The New York Times Best Seller list.[8] She also received a Tony Award for Best Musical as a producer for the musical A Strange Loop.[9] In 2012, Kaling founded the production company Kaling International.[10]
Early life[edit]
Kaling was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to father Avudaiappan Chokalingam, an architect, and mother Swati Chokalingam (née Roy-Sircar), an obstetrician/gynecologist (OB/GYN).[11][12] She has an elder brother, Vijay.[13][14] Her parents are from India[15] and met while working at the same hospital in Nigeria. Her father, a Tamil raised in Chennai,[16][17] was overseeing the building of a hospital wing. Her mother, a Bengali[18][19] from Mumbai,[16][17] was working as an OB/GYN.[20] The family immigrated to the United States in 1979, the same year Kaling was born.[6] Kaling's mother died of pancreatic cancer in 2012.[21][22][23]
Kaling has said she has never been called Vera, her first name,[24] but has been referred to as Mindy since her mother was pregnant with her while her parents were living in Bengal. They were already planning to move to the United States and wanted, Kaling said, a "cute American name" for their daughter, and liked the name Mindy from the TV show Mork & Mindy. The name Vera is, according to Kaling, the name of the "incarnation of a Hindu goddess."[24] Kaling graduated from Buckingham Browne & Nichols, a private school in Cambridge, in 1997. The following year, she entered Dartmouth College, where she was a member of improvisational comedy troupe The Dog Day Players and a cappella group The Rockapellas, produced the comic strip Badly Drawn Girl in The Dartmouth (the college's daily newspaper), and wrote for the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern, the college's humor magazine.[25][26]
Kaling graduated from Dartmouth in 2001[27] with a bachelor's degree in playwriting.[28] She was a classics major for much of college and studied Latin, a subject she had been learning since the seventh grade.[20] She lists the comedy series Dr. Katz, Saturday Night Live, Frasier and Cheers as early influences on her comedy.[29]
Career[edit]
2002–2004: Career beginnings[edit]
While a 19-year-old sophomore at Dartmouth, Kaling was an intern on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.[30] She has said that she never saw a family like hers on TV, which gave her a dual perspective she uses in her writing.[31] She thinks the "everyone against me" mentality is what she learned as a child of immigrants.[31] She named her Mindy Project character Mindy Lahiri after author Jhumpa Lahiri.[32] After college, she moved to Brooklyn, New York.[6] She said one of her worst job experiences was as a production assistant for three months on the Crossing Over With John Edward psychic show.[24] She described it as "depressing."[33] During this same time, she performed stand-up comedy.[31]
Kaling devised her stage name after discovering while doing stand-up comedy that emcees would have trouble pronouncing her last name, Chokalingam, and sometimes made jokes about it.[31] She toured solo and with Craig Robinson, who was later a fellow cast member of The Office.[20] In August 2002, she portrayed Ben Affleck in an off-Broadway play called Matt & Ben,[34] which she co-wrote with her best friend from college, Brenda Withers, who played Matt Damon. Time magazine named it one of their "Top Ten Theatrical Events of The Year", and it was "a surprise hit" at the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival.[6] Initially, Withers and Kaling had, "for their own entertainment, mockingly pretended to be the best friends Matt Damon and Ben Affleck; that pretending spawned Matt & Ben, the goofy play that reimagined how Damon and Affleck came to write the movie Good Will Hunting."[6]
Kaling wrote a blog, Things I've Bought That I Love,[6] which reemerged on her website on September 29, 2011.[35] She write it under the name Mindy Ephron, "a name Kaling chose because she was amused by the idea of her 20-something Indian-American self as a long-lost Ephron sister."[6]
2004–2011: Breakthrough and The Office[edit]
In 2004, when The Office producer Greg Daniels was working to adapt The Office from the BBC TV series of the same name, he hired Kaling as a writer-performer after reading a spec script she wrote. He said, "She's very original ... If anything feels phony or lazy or passé, she'll pounce on it."[6] When Kaling joined The Office, she was 24 years old and was the only woman on a staff of eight.[6] She took on the role of Kelly Kapoor, debuting in the series' second episode, "Diversity Day".[28] Her TV appearances include a 2005 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing Richard Lewis's assistant. She is featured on the CD Comedy Death-Ray and guest-wrote parts of an episode of Saturday Night Live in April 2006.[28][33] After her film debut in The 40-Year-Old Virgin with Steve Carell, Kaling appeared in the film Unaccompanied Minors as a waitress.
Personal life[edit]
Kaling has three children: a daughter, Katherine, born in December 2017, a son, Spencer, born in September 2020 and a daughter, Anne, born in February 2024.[73] She has kept the paternity of her children private.[74] She is an adherent of Hinduism and has expressed her desire to give her children a Hindu upbringing.[75][76][77]
Kaling has a close friendship with B. J. Novak, whom she met through writing for The Office, with Novak calling Kaling "the most important person in my life" (on Fresh Air with Terry Gross). They dated on and off while writing and acting on the show.[78] Novak is the godfather of Kaling's first two children.[79][80]
In 2012, Kaling was included in the Time 100 list of the world's most influential people.[81] In 2014, she was named one of Glamour's Women of the Year.[82] On June 10, 2018, she received an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.[83] In June 2024, the Los Angeles Times featured Kaling in its "L.A. Influential" series as a "creator who is leaving their mark" in Los Angeles.[84]
Kaling owns one percent of the Welsh football team Swansea City.[85]