The actor opened up about TikTok,"The Office" nostalgia and voicing"queer icon" and"huge nerd" Velma on the"Scooby-Doo" prequel.Mindy Kaling at the 2020 Vanity Fair Oscar Party on Feb. 9, 2020, in Beverly Hills.doesn’t feel strongly attached to a side in the so-called “generation wars,” but she knows she wants the Gen Z characters she creates to feel authentic.
“I’m not a millennial, and I’m not Gen X. I just learned I’m a ‘Xennial,’ which is like a micro generation,” the 41-year-old actor and writer told HuffPost while promoting her. “When I went into writing ‘Never Have I Ever,’ I was worried about doing one of these shows where you watched and are like ‘Ugh, how old is this showrunner? This music is from like 1997.’ I didn’t want it to be a nostalgia show.”
Kaling said she made sure to have “a ton of young writers” working on her coming-of-age show “Never Have I Ever,” which wrapped Season 2 filming at the end of March. And she’s learned a lot about Generation Z in the process. “I’d heard the phrase ‘OK, boomer,’ and I thought kids that young were going to be so cruel to me and people my age,” she recalled. “But I think what’s cool about that generation is that activism is so important to them. I think they’re a generation of really fearless young people who want to stand up for what’s right.“That’s been true of the star of the show, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan,” Kaling continued. “She’s an actress and an activist in equal measure, and it’s super important to her.