One of the great advantages the American version of The Office has over its UK inspiration is time: With 22 episodes to fill, show-runner Greg Daniels has been able to expand the show's focus beyond its central characters, letting the spotlight shine on the talented ensemble cast. Among them: writer-actress Mindy Kaling, who plays the ultra-chatty Kelly Kapoor. After graduating from Dartmouth, Kaling worked as a production assistant on the late, unlamented, psychic-talks-to-dead-people program Crossing Over With John Edward, which gave her a first taste of show-biz glamour. She first attracted her own attention by writing and co-starring in Matt And Ben, a two-woman stage show about the early days of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. A small role on Curb Your Enthusiasm, a memorable part in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, a job as a writer-performer on The Office, and a move to L.A. followed. In a recent conversation with The A.V. Club, Kaling spoke about her first joke, her Crossing Over experience, how her Office character developed, and what a jerk she was when she first switched coasts.
The A.V. Club: How did you get into comedy?
Mindy Kaling: I'm not good at anything except writing jokes. I wasn't good at sports, I wasn't good at anything artsy, ever. I think there was a real worry for a while about what I would be good at. I was just this chubby little Indian kid who looked like a nerd. I didn't have a ton of academic skills. It wasn't until I was in high school that I was like, "I guess I like writing dialogue." So that's how I got into it. And I loved SNL. I wasn't like everyone else, I was a big SNL nerd. I was allowed to watch it.
AVC: What drew you to SNL?
MK: You know, I think this is not the artsiest answer, but I just loved Dana Carvey. I must have been 10 or 11, but anything Dana Carvey ever did, I just really loved. He was on for a long time, I don't really know when that era was. I could watch Dana Carvey with my parents, they loved him too. They loved all his characters. Later, Adam Sandler and David Spade, most of my friends feel like they were raised on that, but I couldn't watch that with my folks as much, because they did racier things.
AVC: What was the first joke you wrote that you remember liking?
MK: When I was a little kid, I wrote this play about all these characters living in a haunted house. There was a witch who lived there, and a mummy. When they were all hassling him, this guy who bought the house—I can't believe I remember this—he said to them, "Who's paying the mortgage on this haunted house?" I thought that was really funny when I was a little kid.
AVC: Does a haunted house require a special mortgage?
MK: I don't even know. I think that's a more sophisticated kind of thinking. I just remember, "Who's paying the mortgage on this haunted house?" It was probably because I just recently was told what a mortgage was or something.
AVC: Was Dartmouth a good place to do comedy?
MK: There wasn't a big tradition of comedy at Dartmouth. More than that, there wasn't really anything artsy going on in Hanover, or even in New Hampshire. The cool thing about the school is that there's nothing for people to watch, so if you were to do a play or a sketch or an improv troupe, it was always packed. There's nowhere else for anyone to go. But there was no comedy. The Jack-O-Lantern was our comedy paper, but now that I work with all the Harvard Lampoon guys, you can't even compare it to what's going on at the Lampoon.
AVC: You played Ben Affleck in Matt And Ben, right? Why were you better suited to play him than Matt Damon?
MK: My friend [and Matt And Ben costar] Brenda is about six inches taller than me, I'm 5'3". For some reason, it was that obvious reversal, it just seemed like it would be funnier if the shorter, more petite person would play the more macho character. I don't even know if it was conscious decision-making. I was just so drawn to that character from the very beginning. Before we even knew it was a play. I just wanted to play that guy. Maybe because it was just the opposite of the way my voice is, which sounds like an 11-year-old girl. It just seemed more of a fun stretch, for me to play the less fastidious, goofy guy.
AVC: Did you do a lot of research into Ben Affleck before this play?
MK: Before it came out, it was impossible not to have done research on him, because he was in every paper. Even my 50-year-old Indian mom knew the details of his life. It was pretty easy at that point.
AVC: Did you find out anything most people don't know about Ben Affleck?
MK: No. I think he's just kind of a cool, likeable guy. He's never really done or said anything that I thought was just stupid. I remember there was this one interview where he was talking about the kind of music he likes, and it wasn't like… they do interviews with Jake Gyllenhaal or Tobey Maguire that are just like "I love Arcade Fire and fucking Silver Jews," or whatever. In the interview, he was like, "I like Dave Matthews Band." And I just thought that was kind of nice, because he even said, "I know it's lame or whatever, but it's really what I listen to." There's nothing so great about having shitty taste in music or anything, but I thought it was nice that he didn't do a lot of posturing.
AVC: Did you do the play before or after you worked on Crossing Over With John Edward?
MK: It was kind of the same time. I would work at Crossing Over and then I would go home and write with Brenda. I think the Fringe Festival was happening during that. It was all during that same period.
AVC: What was it like working on the show?
MK: People ask me this question all the time. I never had anything remotely remarkable happen. I've had so many more supernatural phenomena happen to me when I've been working in Burbank on The Office than I did working with John Edward. It was really just a PA job… the one really interesting thing was that I'd never seen grief so much. I've never seen so many grieving people, because I've never known anyone that's died, and that was the most interesting part of it.
AVC: It sounds incredibly depressing, actually.
MK: It was pretty depressing. Although people were so excited to be able to be connecting. I mean, people who'd lost little children and stuff would come on and feel like they were connecting with them. In some ways, it could be very uplifting.
AVC: Did you feel like he actually believed that he had the ability to talk to dead people?
MK: He was pretty blasé about it. This is so terrible, I'm sure I'm going to get some hate mail for this. It never seemed to me like he really believed it, but everyone around him was just telling him what a genius he was, and how amazing he was, all the time. People really did seem to believe. We'd get these letters too, people were like, "I've been waiting a year and a half just to come on the show," and it's just this shitty little studio off in Astoria. We were just like, "Wow."
AVC: The Office was your first professional comedy writing job, right? Were you hired as a writer, or a writer-performer?
MK: I was hired as a writer-performer. I didn't know this, actually, when I signed my contract, because I was a staff writer, but there was a performer clause in the contract.
AVC: They snuck it in there?
MK: Greg snuck it in there, yeah.
AVC: So you could have been forced to be on camera without actually wanting to, then.
MK: Yes, I suppose I could have been forced.
AVC: How did your character develop, and at what point was it clear that you were going to play her?
MK: The character developed because Kelly is an exaggerated version of what I think the upper-level writers on my show believe my personality is. That first season, where there were no other women writers, we'd have these whole stretches of time where I'd have to play kind of the little sister, and the youngest, and the girliest. But it's weird, because Greg hired me off of seeing Matt And Ben, so he saw me when I was at my butchiest ever. And the Kelly character is such an idiotic girl, super girly-girl.
AVC: Was the character conceived around you, or was the slot of the character conceived before you were brought on staff?
MK: I think that Greg knew he wanted to have a more populated world of characters [after the pilot], and I think that he wanted… I don't know. I guess, I don't think so. I think he found me, and then the character came from knowing that I was going to be around.
AVC: You came on board after the pilot, and the general consensus seems to be that the pilot was the least successful episode, because it's so heavily based on the original. Was that sort of the general feeling in the writers' room when you arrived?
MK: I think there was a feeling that that had the least creativity going into it, and more just kind of transcribing and then translating of the original jokes. So, yeah, there was that sense.
AVC: Was the decision already made that you had to make some pretty big moves away from the UK version at that point?
MK: I think Greg had known that he wanted to do that. And then "Diversity Day" came out, and that seemed to be so different, and that sort of set the tone for the rest of the first season.
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