Here are some photos of Mindy Kaling at the premiere event for her movie Late Night, which she wrote and stars in, alongside Emma Thompson. Mindy wore Valentino, and I wish this was a full-length gown rather than a cocktail dress, honestly. But she looks fine and I too enjoy the “fitted bodice with a sparkly/sheer overlay” look. Mindy happily posed with her costars, and with her BFF BJ Novak (ugh), who was there to support her. Mindy has been doing a lot to promote Late Night, and Vanity Fair finally noticed. VF gave Mindy a long interview and write-up about her career and just how groundbreaking she’s been as a writer/actress/lead/producer. You can read the full piece here.
Being an Indian-American pioneer: “I used to think it was more unfair, but now I realize it’s just what my job is. We are supposed to be and enjoy being the pioneers.” “We” means Kaling and her friend Ava DuVernay, whom she met through playing Mrs. Who in DuVernay’s adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time. Kaling has been inspired by DuVernay’s work in supporting other black creators. Kaling also worries that things haven’t changed as much as we want to think. “In terms of directors, we still haven’t seen that diversity,” she says. Furthermore, “I doubt anyone asks white men what they are doing for diversity on-screen.”
On the criticisms that she only cast white guys as her love interests: Kaling says she has grappled with these criticisms, and, looking back, says she might have cast those roles differently. But at the time these story lines simply felt true to her own experiences—“White guys were the ones who hit on me, Indian men didn’t.”
Her love of rom-coms: “I never saw myself in these movies, a chubby, nerdy Indian girl getting the guy at the end. They were a sort of wish fulfillment…. Not everyone who finds love is, like, a size six. They exist, you just don’t see it on TV.”
What happened when she was chosen as one of People’s Most Beautiful in 2011: They didn’t have a dress for her at the shoot. “I went to the bathroom and just cried,” she says. “It was just seen as this impossible thing to dress a woman who’s a size eight.” Today, Kaling demands better. An avid fashion junkie, if she walks into a shoot and they don’t have her size, she walks out. “I’m like, ‘I don’t need to do the shoot. It’s not helping me that much.’”
On being a single mother: She also isn’t interested in the questions surrounding her choices in motherhood. Kaling is currently raising her daughter as a single mother. There has been much speculation about who the father of the baby might be, whether she used donor sperm, etc.—the sort of prying that is not really anybody’s business. She explains that she wants to talk to her daughter about these things first, before she tells anyone else.
On vacations: “I can’t just go to a beach resort and lie there, because I need stimulation too much. It doesn’t have to be work stimulation, but I can’t be still, I can’t be alone with my thoughts.”
“I doubt anyone asks white men what they are doing for diversity on-screen…” This is so true, and Mindy always says it – it’s not enough that she’s breaking new ground as an Indian-American woman – a comedy writer, producer and actress – who develops her own sh-t and creates, but she’s held to the standard of “why aren’t you doing this and this and this for other people?” And white men in her position aren’t asked that. They just aren’t. Look no further than that Seth Rogen GQ interview, where GQ made him sound like a genius for producing a million comedies starring white bros, and there was no conversation about race or diversity. Also, I love what she says about rom-coms and wish fulfillment and representing different kinds of people who fall in love.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid and WENN.
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