Mindy Kaling should be everybody’s boss – I concluded that one minute into our half-hour Zoom interview. We were talking about the fireside chat she’ll do on Oct. 19 at C2 Montreal , and she came across as this terrific mashup of game and wise, passionate and amused. I would follow her anywhere.
A “bookish, chubby, outgoing” kid, Kaling would head after school to her mother’s medical office, where she’d write comedic plays in the phlebotomy room. Her parents indulged her love for Mad magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragones, even though they thought Mad was “very rude;” on their 11-hour family car trips to Niagara Falls , they’d listen to Nichols and May routines.
Her strategy is genius: She’s hires young people, particularly young women of colour, for entry-level positions. In a year or two she puts them in the writers’ room of one of her shows. “Then when they have development ideas for pilots, they want to come to me first.”