Mindy Kaling is one of those people whose talents make you feel incredibly inadequate.
She left University with a major in playwriting and had already interned for Conan O'Brian by that point. Her first play out of college was an off-beat comedy called Matt & Ben that was wildly popular. She then wrote a hit blog and then, three years out of education, she bagged a writing job on the US version of The Office.
She worked her way up, and by Season 8 was a full executive producer.
Now she's doing the promotional rounds for her sixth and final series of the show she writes, produces and stars in - The Mindy Project.
Oh, and she also has two New York Times best-seller books to her name as well as starring in the yet-to-be-released Ocean's Eight and A Wrinkle In Time. No biggie, right?
At PaleyFest's Fall TV Preview event for The Mindy Project, Hello Giggles reports that she finally revealed the secret to her incredible success, saying:
There are so many young people, in particular, who come up to me and say, how did you get to where you did? I think, honestly, a big part of it is to have almost no self-reflective ability at all. Just look forward until the next assignment, the next battle.
And a battle it must have been. Kaling is totally aware of what she represents to people since, when she started her show back in 2012, having a person of colour as a lead actress (never mind writing and producing too) was even more of an anomaly than it is now:
I did not think I wanted it to make an impact. When I made the show, there were no women of colour who were stars of their own show. There was not even a man of colour…since like, I don't even remember when. Now, my favourite shows [have women in the lead]. It was scarier back then. Now, things move so quickly. Now, it doesn't seem as scary.
This obviously meant she faced pressure, since she was not only standing for herself, but was being looked up to as a representative of endless other Indian women around the world:
[There's] this feeling of like, 'Okay, well, you're going to represent all dark-skinned Asian women on this show.' And I was like, 'I don't want to! I want my character to be wild and do bad things.'
She explained that these feelings haven't left her, saying: 'feeling that you're letting down people [whose] opinion means the most to you, which is women — particularly women of colour. And so, that is going to continue for the rest of my life, I think, because of the way that I look.'
Hopefully fellow trailblazers like Issa Rae will mean the undue pressure on Kaling can abate now, as more and more women of varying colours and backgrounds have begun starring in their own shows.
Having said that, she will soon have one girl in particular looking up to her - her daughter.
It was revealed at the same event that Kaling is indeed having a baby girl and we cannot wait to meet her inevitably over-achieving offspring.
Daisy Murray is the Digital Fashion Editor at ELLE UK, spotlighting emerging designers, sustainable shopping, and celebrity style. Since joining in 2016 as an editorial intern, Daisy has run the gamut of fashion journalism - interviewing Molly Goddard backstage at London Fashion Week, investigating the power of androgynous dressing and celebrating the joys of vintage shopping.
