by Mindy Kaling
5:00 a.m.
No, this is not a still from Paranormal Activity. This is what I look like while I’m sleeping just before my five a.m. alarm. I had my brave assistant Sonia trail me for a few days to document my goings-on. Yes, I am a little worried that these photos are on her phone. No, I didn’t do a background check when I hired her at the bus station. Guys, relax! Sonia’s chill and loves God. That’s what her tattoos say.
5:07 a.m.
Here you can see my daily ritual of lolling in bed for an extra five to seven minutes, delaying the inevitable. This is a portrait of me at my most miserable.
5:15 a.m.
Ah, here we have some naked early-morning showering, just a little something to keep you perverts interested.
5:45 a.m.
Now I begin my drive in the dark from West Hollywood to Universal Studios. I have seen some fascinating examples of humanity in these hours. Meth heads arguing in the parking lot of a Kumon, a man pleasuring himself on a bus-stop bench. Years ago I would’ve called them creeps. Now I call them my commute buddies.
6:00 a.m.
I report to the hair and makeup trailer, where, suddenly, I am completely awake and very chatty. My morning chattiness is not reciprocated by very many other actors I’ve ever worked with. I don’t get it at all. Who wouldn’t like to experience the sun rising to a monologue about Khloe Kardashian’s line of girdles? Adam Pally and Chris Messina like to remain silent in the hours of six a.m. to eight a.m., which is excruciating to me. B. J. Novak is famously grumpy in the morning. After years of morning fights, I finally came up with the brilliant idea of doing a “B.J. coffee check,” where I would peer into his cup of coffee to see how much of it he had drunk. I would not even attempt to talk to him until it was more than two-thirds done.
7:00 a.m.
Now I must put on my costume. Sometimes, it’s a chic layered outfit featuring designers such as Oscar de la Renta or Marni. Other times, it’s a pregnancy fat suit. At the end of season 3, Mindy was pregnant, but when you are a size 10, you’re not super excited about wearing extra padding all day. For vanity reasons, I wanted to be the world’s most svelte expectant mother, so I asked my costume designer, Sal, for the “Bethenny Frankel special.” He said no. What does a pregnancy pad feel like? It feels like wearing Spanx stuffed with a spongy foam pumpkin. Great! Love it! There are no small parts, there are only plump actors who dislike pregnant parts.
7:45 a.m.
Today we are shooting an episode with American treasure Stephen Colbert. He plays a Catholic priest and former drug and sex addict who once did it with Madonna on an airport baggage carousel. I like to take beloved television icons and have them say terrible things on camera for laughs. Peabody this, Colbert.
8:00 a.m.
One of the responsibilities of being a writer-performer is that after I rehearse with the other actors, I make adjustments to the script on the fly. Here’s director Michael Spiller, writer Tracey Wigfield, and me talking through the lines and looking for places we could make changes. Michael’s probably saying something like “This is perfect, I don’t see how you could improve any of it! Go to craft services and treat yourself to a doughnut.”
8:20 a.m.
I have two writer-producers on set, the likable Midwestern writing team of Ike Barinholtz and David Stassen. Ike plays Nurse Morgan, and it surprises people that he’s a writer, because Morgan is an ex-con who pronounces the word “intelligence” with a hard g. Ike and Dave’s job is to write alts, run them in to the actors on set, and wear matching gingham shirts. For two sweet, well-raised men, their jokes can be breathtakingly raunchy. But at their core, they are old-fashioned Chicago gentlemen who will always open a door for you or eat seventy buffalo wings with you.
Noon
At noon we break on set for lunch. I take a golf cart over to the writers’ building, which is across the lot. I drive my golf cart like a pro, which is yet another way I resemble an old white man.
This is the insane asylum where I was raised. Just kidding! This is The Mindy Project production office. Our writers’ room is on the third floor of The Mindy Project building. The other two floors house our accounting, locations, clearance, set-design, and art departments. They are all hardworking people with fantastic candy bowls.
Even though the building only has three floors, I have never once taken the stairs. Yes, we have an elevator for a building with three floors, because this is Los Angeles, where we all drive two blocks to run on a treadmill for forty-five minutes. Once I’m in the writers’ room, I interrupt all productivity because I haven’t seen my writing staff yet and I am starved for gossip. Usually the gossip is “meh,” like my writer Chris might say he and his boyfriend were at brunch and saw Cat Deeley. But I’ll take it! Then Matt Warburton, an executive producer, goes through what the writers are working on so I can weigh in. Then I bark, “This is all terrible! Start over!,” even if it’s good. It’s been proven that writers are funnier when they are demoralized.
For lunch I usually have something hearty like a burger or tacos. I have always believed lunch should be the biggest meal of the day. People who say breakfast should be the biggest meal are insane. You can’t have dessert at breakfast.
12:25 p.m.
I’m fanatical about brushing my teeth after lunch. My show is about dating, so you never know when you are going to kiss someone. That’s the kind of sexy, unpredictable set I like to run. Oh! I need to mention here that the behavior and opinions expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of Universal Television Group.
12:30 p.m.
Once a week, Matt, a couple of other writers, and I hop on a conference call with executives to pitch them the story for an upcoming episode. I explain the key points of the story, and, afterward, I get reactions from everyone on the call. Sometimes I mute the call and make exasperated and/or disrespectful comments.
1:00 p.m.
After lunch is when we hold our table read for the next episode. I love table reads because it’s like a mini live performance and the energy reminds me of when I did plays back in New York. Also, the space between the wall and the table is very small, so sometimes handsome actors have to hold on to me to squeeze by.
Knowing which jokes play well is so important to us that one of the assistants’ entire job at the read is to listen carefully and put a check mark next to a place where there was a laugh. Nothing is sadder than pages of unmarked dialogue.
2:00 p.m.
Now it is time to get beautified again to go act. In the hours since I arrived on set, I now have an oily face, hair snarls, and food particles in clothes. A fleet of fashionably dressed women clean all that up so America doesn’t have to see any of it.
2:30 p.m.
And now, back to shooting.
3:15 p.m.
More shooting.
4:45 p.m.
Sometimes during the day there is a birthday in the writers’ room, so I will scurry over for a quick round of “Happy Birthday,” jam some cake in my mouth, and head back to set. It’s important to make a big deal about birthdays at work because we spend so many hours here, and enormous amounts of food makes you miss your family less.
5:00 p.m. and throughout the day
Around five p.m. and later, I get very silly. Ike and I have a terrible habit of setting each other off on laughing fits, or “breaking,” that makes it impossible to continue to shoot the show, and it’s worse in the afternoon because my tiredness is starting to set in. It can sometimes be a line of dialogue, but usually it’s something tiny: an especially belabored sigh, a little facial twitch, the way one of us chooses to plop down in a roller chair. I’ve even lost it by the way that Ike puts his glasses on. This happens about once a week and lasts seven to ten minutes. These are some of my favorite times with him and on set.
If I am lucky, at least once an episode we have some kind of party or birthday scene and I get to eat cake on camera. Prop cake is the sweetest
kind of cake because, unlike with regular cake, it has no calories because my character is eating it, not me. That’s how it works. Also, I am getting paid to eat cake. It’s a Two-Caker Day when it’s a writer’s birthday and cake is called for in a scene—a day as rare and wonderful as Halley’s Comet.
5:30 p.m.
During another set-up, I take my golf cart over to the soundstage, where I do ADR, which stands for additional dialogue recording. That’s the disembodied voice you hear at the beginning of an episode. Such as this:
MINDY (voiceover)
It’s so great to be back in New York in the winter. Curling up in a warm bed next to the one you love. The only problem is, I’m pregnant and morning-sick as hell.
6:00 p.m.
Getting in a quick nap. I sleep so deeply, and so quickly, my writer Tracey Wigfield has commented that when I close my eyes to nap, “It’s like you die for a few minutes.”
6:15 p.m.
More shooting.
8:00 p.m.
When we are shooting, I am always able to find creative places to take quick naps. Eleven years into this, I am able to sleep through any amount of noise and temperature. Sometimes I wake up and hope I slept through a Walking Dead–type zombie apocalypse and I have to lead humans into a new world order.
8:15 p.m.
I am wrapped on set! It’s not like you see in plays and movies where someone yells “That’s a wrap!” and then the cast all changes into street clothes and grabs their backpacks and goes to a local bar. When we wrap, everyone tears off their costumes and races home to their neglected children, only to find they have begun to call the nanny “Daddy.” I go to my trailer to look over my lines for the next day and accidentally call Sonia my wife.
8:30 p.m.
I then wash my face free of makeup and throw on my street clothes and re-join the writers for dinner. Our writers get along very well, but the fights we’ve had over what we should eat for dinner are the most acrimonious Lannister/Stark throwdowns I’ve ever been a part of.
9:30 p.m.
After the writers leave, I head to editing. Here is my quiet sanctuary, where it is just me, the editor, a bag of McDonald’s, and the episode in front of me. “Let’s make something really special,” I say to my editor, Dave Rogers, who worked on Seinfeld and The Office. “Get your feet off the coffee table,” he replies. We have fun.
12:30 a.m.
About 50 percent of the time, I have enough energy to remove my clothes and put on pajamas when I go to bed. Otherwise I just fall asleep in the clothes I went to work in, which I like to think of as a sexy, ongoing walk of shame.
And then I sleep and dream of birthday cakes to come, both fake and real.
BAD SPORT
I AM A TERRIBLE sport. By age eight, I had been banned from playing board games by my mother because of how competitive and intense I got. Relaxed after-dinner games of Monopoly deteriorated into tear-soaked affairs with accusations of cheating, favoritism, and veiled death threats. Extended family had to be apologized to; desserts were revoked.
I’ve chilled out a little as I’ve gotten older, but my “bad sport” streak still rears its head sometimes. Once, while living in New York City in the early 2000s, I was asked to leave a sports bar because the Yankees were playing my hometown Red Sox on TV and I lost my cool at a guy who was loudly dissing them. I yelled, “Derek Jeter is baseball’s Hitler!” This was in New York City. In a room full of Jewish sports fans. I don’t even really like baseball that much! I have problems.
In 2014, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences asked me to announce the annual Emmy nominations. I was excited about it for one reason, and one reason alone: I thought, This might help me get nominated for an Emmy!
I should say here that although I love praise that is broadcast live to millions of people, receiving an Emmy nomination is not simply about the recognition. Any nomination, in any category, would help The Mindy Project enormously because, in a world where you are not getting huge ratings, every little bit of prestige helps to convince a network to keep you on the air. But also, I love praise broadcast to millions of people. And the helping-the-show thing.
The Emmy announcements take place at 5:30 a.m., Pacific Standard Time, because when we are finding out the top six contenders for best miniseries, movie, or dramatic special, it’s important that the whole nation watch as one. I woke up at two a.m. and drove to the Academy building in North Hollywood. Contrary to what you might think, North Hollywood is not in Hollywood, or even that close to it. It’s in the Valley. Actually, North Hollywood is to Hollywood as Newark is to New York; it really sounds like the other thing but it’s way, way different, to the point where you’re like, “Hey, man, are you trying to trick me? Because this place is definitely not like that other place.” North Hollywood is actually kind of nice during the day, but it is not a place you want to be at 2:30 a.m. in stiletto heels. Once I got inside the Academy building, I sat in the green room getting my hair and makeup done during the time that, on any normal night, I would be dreaming about Idris Elba’s and my honeymoon. (It’s in the Seychelles, we fight on the first night, make up the next morning, and never fight again for the rest of our lives.)
Carson Daly was presenting with me, and he arrived at 3:30 a.m. and popped his head in to say hello. I know Carson a little, and I like him a lot. I always marvel at his schedule. He hosts The Voice, which shoots in Los Angeles, then cohosts the Today show, which shoots in New York City, and that’s in addition to hosting Last Call with Carson Daly, which shoots in L.A. again. He seems to have this impossible schedule and still manages to be a funny and down-to-earth guy. Which means he is either a rare and wonderful person or he is twins who live on opposite coasts and have committed their lives to this low-stakes and marvelous hoax. I like either explanation.
We rehearsed on set at four a.m. Afterward, the president of the Academy, Bruce Rosenbaum, came by. He was very sweet, and greeted me, saying, “Hi, Mindy. Thanks for being here.” I thanked him for inviting me. That’s when it happened. Bruce looked away for a second, and his tone shifted ever so slightly. “You know, you’re in such a tough category,” he said kindly, patting my arm, then walked away to concern himself with other matters.
That’s when I knew I wasn’t going to get nominated. If I hadn’t been paying close attention, I wouldn’t have noticed it, but there it was, no mistake about it. Bruce was trying to tell me so I could prepare my reaction when I had to announce the news on live TV. The disappointment hit me fast, and it hit me hard. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how much I actually wanted it.
Did I think I deserved a nomination? I don’t know, yeah! Maybe it sounds egotistical, but if you’re a person who creates your own show and stars in it, shouldn’t you believe you deserve recognition for it? If you don’t, then why not? Worse yet, who will?
Then an even worse feeling quickly eclipsed my disappointment. I realized: Oh, no. Now I have to stand here on a stage in goddamn North Hollywood and announce these other people while everyone sees me not get nominated. I gave up Idris Elba honeymoon dream sex for this bullshit?
That’s when that old familiar feeling began to surge inside my veins. Bad sport. Hurt ego. Not wanting to stay and watch while my family kept playing Monopoly after I had gone bankrupt because I kept landing on “jail” and couldn’t buy my way out because I bought too many goddamn railroads and Dad wouldn’t lend me money because it was against the rules!
ARGGHH!!! SCREW EVERYONE. I WANNA WIN!!!
Photos taken of me just before the announcement
I battled two instincts:
1) To bail on the whole event so I didn’t have to read the names of a bunch of Poindexters whose shows I don’t care about, which would cause a massive PR disaster, and I would be considered a “Charlie Sheen” type problematic personality from now on, or,
2) To stay and be gracious so people would continue to think I’m professional and classy.
Instinct number 2 won out. B
ut not by much. If Carson only knew how close he was to having to read all those names by himself. Although, I bet his secret twin would’ve shown up and helped him. Ugh. They probably would have done it effortlessly and been the heroes of the whole morning.
We read the names live at 5:30 a.m. and I was very nervous. It was a strange kind of nervousness. Now that I knew I wasn’t going to be nominated, I was nervous because everyone would be watching me, and I desperately needed to react in a calm and confident way when they didn’t call my name. There are enough people out there who would love to see my face falter at that moment, make a GIF about it, give it a mean caption, and send it out to all their friends.
So I wasn’t going to give it to them.
Before Carson read my category, “Lead Actress in a Comedy Series,” I unfocused my eyes on the teleprompter, and I pictured myself in 2002, in Brooklyn, wishing I knew a way to break into Hollywood and thinking, with no hope at all, There is no way out of this situation. I was so innocent and naïve—I probably still thought North Hollywood was close to Hollywood. As Carson started reading names, I tuned him out and thought about how the only reason I was even asked to present that morning was because I was the star of a show that was considered relevant and attention-getting, and how that anxious twenty-two-year-old in Brooklyn would have slept so much better knowing I would be standing here one day. It had an oddly calming effect, and by the time Carson was reading the last nominee—Melissa McCarthy—I stood next to him, looking positively serene on camera. The greatest crime is that I wasn’t nominated for that acting performance.