by Mindy Kaling
In mid-October, on Facebook, I saw photos of Greta after booty ballet class with a gorgeous actress in her early twenties whom I recognized as the former second lead on a Disney Channel show I will call Dixie Peppard, Secret Singer-Songwriter and Witch. Greta was tagged and the caption was: “Doing booty ballet with my BFF. Can barely walk!” I clicked on this photo and saw even more photos of Greta and Second Lead. Greta and Second Lead in Malibu. Greta and Second Lead at a Dodgers game. Greta and Second Lead at a Beverly Hills hair salon getting “lobs” (long bobs) together.
I had been replaced by a younger model. And now they had matching long bobs.
The sting of being replaced was very painful. Thank God this was pre-Twitter, because I know I would’ve tweeted a lot of angry quotes about betrayal and then later deleted them in a worried state. Greta’s phasing me out of her life hurt way more than Nate. Hell, it hurt way more than most breakups I’d had, and we were only friends for about four months. But as any woman reading this will attest to, there are not many relationships more powerful than that of two women who fall fast and deep into a friendship. It was heartbreaking to be loved and left.
Happily, though, a few months later, work had taken over my entire life, and my friend group was whittled down to the old reliable standbys: Mom, Jocelyn, Brenda, and B.J. None of them would love the term “old reliable standby,” so shhh, don’t tell them. The great thing about true best friends is that when you go MIA for a few months, they inquire but they don’t press. Best friends know the power of infatuation but also how quickly it dissipates. You just have to wait it out. And then afterward, tease them about it for decades.
In the past ten years, I have met a handful of chic and charismatic women in Los Angeles with whom I have had the telltale spark of being “best-friend material.” It’s exciting, like seeing a guy you are really attracted to from across the room at a party. None, however, has managed to infiltrate deep into my best-friend group, where they have seen me openly weep, heard me talk shit about my job, or checked my scalp for worrisome alopecia spots. But one magical summer, Greta was my best friend. And then, like the guy who spends the night and the next morning tells you, “I honestly feel like I’ve never met anyone like you before,” she was gone.
HOW TO GET YOUR OWN TV SHOW (AND NEARLY DIE OF ANXIETY)
THOUGH I AM extremely young, I am old enough to remember Must-See TV. For the small handful of readers who are even younger than me and don’t know what I’m talking about, Must-See TV refers to the Thursday-night lineup on NBC in the ’80s and ’90s, when you could watch back-to-back, amazing, high-quality shows like Cheers, Seinfeld, and Friends. I had the unique experience of being hired to work at NBC in 2004, the year Friends ended, which marked the death of that dynasty. Over the next eight years, Must-See TV went from Must-See TV to Pretty Good TV to Not the Worst Thing on TV to Meh, Just Watch HBO TV.
I was lucky enough to be employed at one of the remaining great NBC shows of the mid-2000s, The Office. Greg Daniels, the creator of the American version of The Office, had plucked me from a strange little off-Broadway play, Matt and Ben, which I had cowritten and in which I played Ben Affleck, to write on his show.1 In eight years The Office went from near-cancellation to the kind of mainstream and critical success where people come up to you and ask, “Is Dwight really like that in real life?” to which I respond: “Oh, no, Rainn isn’t like Dwight. Dwight is an angel next to Rainn. Rainn is a demon.”
In the fall of 2011, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I had been working on The Office for almost eight years. I was thirty-one years old and was one of the few people in TV who felt like I had job stability.
As the success of The Office grew, so did my role as a writer and producer, and by season 8 I had written twenty-four episodes. I was invited to be on cool talk shows like The Tonight Show and The Late Show with David Letterman, and Dave and Paul Shaffer didn’t even have to pretend to know the show that I was on.
I got to see my friend B. J. Novak daily, which, when we weren’t fighting, was the absolute best. Greg and I were nominated for an Emmy for writing the “Niagara” episode, where Jim and Pam get married. But perhaps best of all, I had enough pull that the writers’ assistant kept the fridge stocked with my favorite junk foods—Australian red licorice and Pepperidge Farm cinnamon raisin bread—without my even asking. If that isn’t success and power, I don’t know what is.
Most TV writers, even the good ones, aren’t usually lucky enough to be employed on a great show. And even great shows get canceled. Most writers have to hop from gig to gig to pay for their Priuses and private schools and divorces. I was an exception. I had what most writers dream of: a consistent source of free lunch for eight years. I was a member of the core creative team of what some people considered a classic American comedy, with no end in sight. And did I appreciate it? Um … sometimes?
The truth was, I had started growing a little restless. I had a dream job—was I ungrateful to wonder what more there might be for me? Or complacent if I didn’t? The fights in the writers’ room and the outcomes that didn’t go my way, the one or two great lines a week on-camera, and, of course, the snacks—was there more to life than an endless supply of Australian red licorice (OK, obviously not, that stuff’s amazing, but you know what I mean)?! And who was I to try to seek anything better? In high school I had been cast as a rag-picker/townsperson/vagrant in eight consecutive plays. Why would I think I could be anything more than part of an ensemble of anything? These conflicting feelings about my job were illuminating—I was finally experiencing what they call “White People Problems.” Or, maybe because of my socioeconomic background, this is more of a “First World Problem”? Or a “One Percenter” issue? I can’t pinpoint which conflict of privilege I was experiencing, but you get it.
THE SOMEWHAT YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS
In television, no matter what your title is, no matter how much you contribute, the only person who has the final say is the showrunner.
When you aren’t the showrunner on a TV show, you feel like a highly regarded attorney: you work hard, do the research, and argue your case, but the judge (in this case, Greg, or Paul Lieberstein, who played Toby on the show and became showrunner after Greg) gets to decide what will actually happen.
And though you understand the pecking order and respect the judge—and even if the judge says “Great argument, Counselor Kaling, the court concurs”—you also just want to not have to plead your case all the time. I wanted to be the judge, jury, and executive producer. (See what I did there?)
Here is a taste of the judge-versus-attorney dynamic between Paul and me in the final years at The Office.
Paul would give me an assignment, and if I didn’t like it, sometimes I would still do it … but sometimes I would do something else. Then I would turn it in and wait for Paul to read it, hoping he would come out of his office, full of wonder and appreciation at my risk taking. “Mindy, I’m amazed by you,” he would say, awestruck. “Not only did you complete the assignment, you reinvented the assignment. You reinvented comedy. Go home. Sleep the sleep of the creatively righteous.”
Instead this is what happened.
PAUL: Hey. This is not the assignment I gave you.
ME: I didn’t believe in the assignment you gave me, so I tried something else, and I’m pretty excited about the results, if I may say so—
PAUL: (exasperated) I don’t care if you don’t believe in it, go do it.
I can’t imagine how difficult I was to manage back then. I don’t think Paul could even have imagined it. I still don’t think he believes it. He may have made it into a repressed memory that won’t come out until after years of therapy.
The truth is, if I had a writer on my staff now who behaved like I did, I would throw them out the window of the writers’ room, move their parking space to Structure C (it’s really far away), and make them write 1,000 Morgan Tookers “when I was in prison” jokes.
Though I deserved it probably dozens of t
imes, Paul never actually fired me. (Or, if he did, I never found out about it, because we have the same manager.)
The flip side to our fighting was the fact that I really loved working for him, because he was—and is—one of the most gifted writers I know. He was also a great leader. Methodical and soft-spoken, Paul talked so quietly that sometimes I couldn’t hear him when I was sitting next to him. I was always leaning in and saying “Huh? Heh?” It wasn’t until later that I realized Paul’s quietness was a result of his confidence. He didn’t need to shout to be heard. I don’t have that kind of confidence. My voice is loud and piercing, and I project like I was once told by a doctor during a childhood illness that I would never speak again. Anyone in a mile radius of our studio recognizes the brittle squawk of Mindy Kaling.
I noticed, though, as the years went by, that my passionate arguments became quieter. Part of me attributed it to my maturing and chilling out, but I suspected it might also be something a little more sad. I worried that my well of ideas for what could happen to this group of people working at a small paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania, was going dry. That feeling was also making me antsy.
Over the course of the series, I had gone from a gleeful and inexperienced writer who couldn’t believe she was in front of a camera to a pretty confident actress. The reason is because I went to the best comedy acting program in the world: the Steve Carell School of Acting. The Office was like sitting through a seven-year master class on comic acting led by Steve. At the Steve Carell School of Acting, I saw Steve get handed a page-long monologue, glance at it for twenty seconds, and have it memorized. He could go from craft services, where he could be enjoying a cup of tea and telling a funny story, to set, where, on cue, he could begin weeping like a faucet. When the director said cut, he would go back to his cup of tea and funny story. I once witnessed him make a room full of actors burst into laughter during a scene by improvising the line: “All right, everybody in the conference room! I don’t care if you are gay or straight or a lesbian or overweight! Just get in here, right now!” For letting me watch him do all those things, I really ought to send him some money, but, honestly, he doesn’t need it. He has that sweet Despicable Me money.
I told my manager, Howard Klein, privately how I felt, and so, at the end of season 7, when my original contract with Universal expired, they hired me to stay on as a writer and actress with The Office, and included a development deal for a pilot. A development deal is pretty rad. I got an assistant, whose job it was to figure out how iCloud worked and pretend to be my friend sometimes but let me yell at her other times. Basically I got a chunk of money to keep working on The Office but also to create a brand-new show, which I would write on Sunday afternoons sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor with no pants on.
My natural assumption was that NBC would put my show on the air as part of a revitalized Must-See TV and make two hundred classic episodes—no lazy clip shows—finishing with a ninety-minute finale that everyone agreed was a sweet and satisfying send-off. I would emerge from the show’s legacy as a modern version of Larry David and Mary Tyler Moore, retiring to a tasteful megacompound on Martha’s Vineyard, where I would write plays and drink wine with Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen at least several nights a week.
The one thing I was unprepared for was the slightest setback. What could go wrong?
“THE UNTITLED MINDY KALING PROJECT”
Let’s go over my plan: I was going to write a show starring myself and it was going to be a smash hit. I would take everything good I learned at The Office and lose everything I didn’t like about The Office. Mindy Kaling + Office good – Office bad = Best show ever made = Me someday receiving a Kennedy Center Honor from President Elizabeth Warren.
But first I had to assemble all of the ingredients I knew a great show had to have.
Ingredient #1: A Big Funny Lead
I knew I wanted my character in the new show to be a big comedy character. There are plenty of shows on TV where the lead female exists solely to be the calm, responsible voice of reason. She is often the one keeping the cast of kooky side characters at bay, saying stuff like “Guys, are you sure this is a good idea?” or “You guys go on the road trip to recover the sex tape; I’ll stay here on the B-story about getting locked in the pantry.”
My favorite shows have a flawed and ridiculous lead who is steering the comedy of the show, making big mistakes and then struggling to fix them. Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers was my favorite example, as was Edina Monsoon from Absolutely Fabulous, and Michael Scott, of course. This was a must.
Ingredient #2: A Compelling Setting
I wanted the audience to enjoy my character’s bad behavior but also feel like she had some redeeming quality, which is the sneaky reason I chose to make Mindy Lahiri a doctor. I felt like if she did terrible things, but hey, she had this noble job where she was delivering babies and saving lives, people would respect her. This trick always works, by the way. That’s why every doctor on TV is a drug addict, a sociopath, or just plain mega-rude. Doctors can do anything they want!
When I was first setting my new show in the world of doctors, I wanted the medical side of it to be front and center. It was my mother, an OB/GYN herself, who dissuaded me from that.
ME: Mom, let’s talk about the practical details of your job, for research.
MOM: No, that is boring. If people want to see medical stuff they should watch ER.
ME: Mom, that show hasn’t been on for years. Why shouldn’t I put medical stuff in the show?
MOM: Because it’s sad and even when it’s happy, it can be gruesome.
MINDY: But shouldn’t the show be gritty and realistic?
MOM: Here’s realistic: when a baby is born, it’s covered in blood and strange fluids. Occasionally it has a cord around its neck and it’s blue and it’s wailing because its little body is cold. The only people who think it’s beautiful are its parents, and the doctor is just happy it’s alive. And none of that is funny.
My mother had a great argument. Plus, I didn’t want to hold a prop baby covered in birth slime. If there were two things my mom knew, it was comedy and obstetrics. And that was that.
Mom and I had always shared a love of romantic comedies and the version of Manhattan that Nora Ephron and Woody Allen had created for us in You’ve Got Mail and Annie Hall. She wanted me to play a character in that world. She also wanted to see me in decent clothes for once. While she loved the comedy on The Office, she also commented pretty regularly on how unglamorous it was. “Mom, the show isn’t supposed to be glamorous; it’s supposed to be real,” I explained. “Like Greg always says: ‘what’s beautiful is what’s real.’ ”
“What’s beautiful can also be what’s beautiful, though,” she replied. “I think there has been some precedent of that in Hollywood.” Not a bad point.
Mom continued, “I live real life every day. Why do I need to see it when I come home?” How could I argue with that?
Ingredient #3: Literary Pretensions
The Mindy Project is most inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Besides being in a structurally perfect novel, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy are probably my favorite couple in any book.2 Danny Castellano is most based on Mr. Darcy (and a generous helping of Sonny Corleone from The Godfather). As for Mindy? Um, Mindy is much less like Elizabeth Bennet than she is a combination of Carrie Bradshaw and Eric Cartman.
Many people think romantic comedies are cheesy and boring, but that’s only because most romantic comedies that come out now are less funny than, say, a card your grandmother might send you for your birthday. People also complain that romantic comedies are formulaic and the ending is always the same. So I wasn’t going to do that.
Here’s what my show would be like (the then-called The Untitled Mindy Kaling Project). Boy meets Girl. Boy hates Girl. Girl is not that crazy about Boy either. Eventually Girl wears Boy down with friendliness. Boy and Girl become confidants. Boy grows to love girl but can’t express it. Boy and Gi
rl get very close to marrying other boys and girls. Boy realizes he was being kind of a dick. Girl realizes she was being judgmental and superficial. Boy and Girl have sex. Boy and Girl accidentally get pregnant. Boy and Girl love each other as best they can and try to live happily ever after.
Let’s see if that works!
QUICK AND PAINFUL REJECTION: SEE YA, NBC
I submitted The Untitled Mindy Kaling Project to NBC Studios on a Thursday before a weekend I had planned in Palm Springs for my best friend Jocelyn’s bachelorette party. I had heard there was some excitement about my script at the studio and assumed I would hear good news by the end of the workday on Friday. But as Saturday of that weekend rolled by, I still hadn’t heard anything. Tipsy on margaritas and sleepy on poolside nachos, this was the first uneasy moment in which I considered the possibility that this pilot might not be a go. That night we went to a gay dance club, and while we were all dancing to Rihanna’s “Rude Boy,” I was starting to get worried.
It occurred to me that I barely knew the president of the studio at all, and this would be his decision entirely.
For the eight years that I had been there, NBC had been like a dysfunctional African country where the president changed every eleven months or so. Actually, NBC made most African countries look pretty stable by comparison. (Except Botswana. I hear good things about Botswana. That’s where The Ladies #1 Detective Agency is.)
Over the entire run of The Office, there were seven different people who had run the studio and network. Bob Greenblatt was the newest chief. I had met him briefly at a party once; he was tall and elegant and red-haired. We were friendly, but we were not friends.