MIndy’s CallIng

Mindy Kaling
seems to move at the speed of light.
At 33, she is the creator, producer, head writer, and star of her own Fox network sitcom,
The Mindy Project. Her growing fan base includes close to 2 million Twitter followers,
at whom Kaling fires off tweets on topics as varied as shopping, friendship,
and the revenge fantasies she has while jogging. Her collection of essays,
Is Everyone Hanging out Without Me? (And other concerns),
became a best-seller last year when her only claim to fame was being
a writer on and co-starring in NBC’s series The office.
if colleagues left in the dust are shaking their heads, Kaling
shrugs off her heady ascension. “i’m an asian kid who grew up
the child of immigrants and went to an ivy league school,”
she says, her high-pitched voice and rapid speech making her
sound like an enthusiastic teenager rather than an industry
heavyweight. “i’m a hyper-perfectionist and a people-pleaser.”
raised in boston with her older brother Vijay by her
ob/gyn mother Swati and architect father avu, Kaling
became interested in comedy as a teenager. She spent hours
deconstructing movies and comedy skits. after graduating
from Dartmouth College, she and her roommate brenda
Withers moved to new york and while looking for work wrote
a comedic play called Matt & Ben, in which Kaling played ben
affleck to Withers’ matt Damon. in 2002, it won top honors at
the Fringe Festival. after moving off-broadway, Time magazine
named it among the “top 10 theatrical Events of the year.”
Producer greg Daniels, just about to launch The Office, took
note and hired the then 24-year-old as the show’s sole female
writer. During her eight-year tenure, the cast earned an Emmy
nomination and she earned critical praise for her role as the
narcissistic customer service representative Kelly Kapoor.
last year, when the show entered its final season, Kaling
made a pitch to Fox: She wanted to write, produce, and star
in The Mindy Project, playing a romantic-comedy obsessed
ob/gyn in new york. then Kaling boarded a plane to
boston, where she spent three months at the bedside of her
mother, who was dying of pancreatic cancer. “in some ways,
W ebMD.coM 36 Jan/FEb 2013
those were the most amazing three months,” says Kaling,
who describes her relationship with her mother as one of the
most significant of her life.
Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer
deaths in the united States. most patients are diagnosed at a
late stage with a five-year survival rate of 2%. “no one is lucky
to get cancer, but i remember feeling jealous of people who
got a cancer where there were stages and you could do chemo
to [treat] it,” says Kaling, whose mother lived with the diagnosis
for eight months.
a week before her mother’s death last January, Kaling
pulled out a notebook and pen and asked her mother for
advice. “We had accepted by then that she was not going to
survive, and so suddenly we had to have really accelerated conversations,”
she remembers. “i always thought she would be
around when i had a child, but when i realized she wouldn’t
be, we talked about possible names for my kids. She told me
things she wanted me to tell my children.”
the day her mother died, Kaling checked her overflowing
voicemail and learned that Fox had given her and The Mindy
Project the go-ahead. “i was lucky to have that to think about
instead,” she says quietly.
Speed Limits
Working 16-hour days might be good for distraction, but Kaling
admits that being the boss of all she surveys is exhausting. “i
Jill GreenberG/Corbis outline