Tragic Details About The Office Star Mindy Kaling

For nearly a decade on "The Office," Mindy Kaling brought to life Kelly Kapoor, Dunder Mifflin's customer service representative. Bursting with energy, drama, and the gift of gab, Kelly doesn't exactly live a life that's fraught with hardship. Rather, her main trials include keeping up with celebrity gossip (many even think she should've been a gossip columnist) and obsessing over unavailable guys like Ryan Howard (B.J. Novak). 

But when the cameras stopped rolling, and Kaling stepped back into her own shoes, she faced a myriad of hurdles that would've sent her on-screen persona into a tailspin. While Kelly is no stranger to being a minority in a workplace setting, with the occasional offensive comment thrown her way by Michael Scott (Steve Carell), she never has to prove herself. Kaling — as the only minority in the room — felt that she had to consistently show her worth as a writer and producer on "The Office."

As Kaling fought to garner appreciation for her comedic chops, the industry as a whole was often unkind to her. Over the years, while building an empire for herself as a multifaceted creative, she was made to feel self-conscious about her body, with snide comments from coworkers about her appearance cutting deep. Even audiences were critical, with many South Asian women bashing Kaling for how she chose to represent them in her projects. All the while, Kaling has dealt with personal challenges outside of her career, including the passing of her mother from pancreatic cancer and navigating single motherhood without her guidance.

Before her career had even taken off, Mindy Kaling experienced firsthand how harsh Hollywood can be. Fresh out of college from Dartmouth, she and her best friend Brenda Withers concocted the satirical play "Matt & Ben," which follows Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as the script for "Good Will Hunting" is delivered to them from the heavens. An Off-Broadway hit, Kaling and Withers starred in the play, which earned the award for best overall production at the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival.

Despite acclaimed performances as Damon and Affleck, the up-and-coming actresses weren't seen as good enough to play what should've been the easiest roles ever — themselves. Though the success of "Matt & Ben" prompted the WB Network to offer Kaling and Withers their own sketch comedy show, "Mindy & Brenda," they were forced to audition and, ultimately, weren't cast. For Kaling, it was both heartbreaking and humiliating.

In an interview with The Guardian, Kaling said, "We were not considered attractive or funny enough to play ourselves. That network is no longer on the air, and 'The Office' went on to be one of NBC's most hit shows in years. I feel like karmically, I was vindicated, but at the time it felt terrible." 

When Mindy Kaling started to become a household name thanks to the meteoric success of "The Office," the newfound attention came with some insecurity. That's because at the time, she didn't see many other actresses on television who looked like her.

"On TV, if you were really thin, then you could be the lead. Otherwise, you had to be like 250 pounds, and you had to be the slapstick comic relief. But what was crazy, what was left out, is just this range of people which is a majority of American women over the age of 24," she said in an interview with Good Morning America. "What if you're like a [size] 12 and you want to just live your life and look cute and date? At that time, when I wrote 'Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?' [in 2011], it was like a no man's land."

She vividly remembers an instance in a writers' room, when a coworker suggested that his character tell Kaling's to drop 15 pounds. She told GMA that having her biggest insecurity spotlighted like that was "devastating." Now, 20 years later, she's learned to tune out the naysayers and, for the first time, feel confident in her own skin. She's moving her body in ways that make her feel healthy, including 20 miles of running/hiking weekly, as well as practicing moderation at meals.

After getting a taste of what it's like to collaborate with a close friend in "Matt & Ben," Mindy Kaling desperately craved that again after moving to LA and cementing herself in the comedic side of Hollywood. However, as she watched the "comedy cliques" of the early 2000s — Judd Apatow and Seth Rogan, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey — take over the screen, Kaling became increasingly upset that she wasn't part of such a dynamic.

"I was really jealous and I had a chip on my shoulder about it. Because in that aughts time, you were in a clique or you weren't. I was on 'The Office,' so many people were like, 'Well, she's there,' and maybe you could argue that that was a clique," Kaling said on the "Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard" podcast. "But the writing stuff was very competitive with each other. We all had our own private ambitions, our own stuff we wanted to do. We wanted to write the best scripts, kill the table read, have Steve Carell think we were the funniest writer."

Though she did have the chance to immerse herself in that world upon landing a role in Apatow's "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," she didn't want to seem desperate to ingratiate herself. So instead of jumping into the conversation and jokes that were happening between takes, she returned to the solitude of her trailer. She said on the podcast, "I remember thinking, 'What a missed opportunity.'"

"The Office" may have marked Mindy Kaling's big break into the world of sitcoms, but it wasn't her first rodeo in comedy. In fact, her comedic roots started taking shape even before "Matt & Ben" — as a child, she had her father roaring with laughter at the short stories she penned. So by the time she became a triple threat actress, writer, and producer on "The Office," she felt ready to lend her talents. However, she was met with a "debilitating" form of sexism by her male peers.

She said in an interview with NPR, "When, as a producer and a writer, whether it was at 'The Office' or [at 'The Mindy Project'], if I make a decision, it'll still seem like it's up for debate. And I noticed that a little bit at 'The Office,' with, like, an actor: If I decided there'd be a certain way in the script, it would still seem open-ended whereas ... if I was a man I would not have seen that."

To help counter this sexism and feel confident in the decisions that she was making — especially on "The Mindy Project," which she created — Kaling started leaving the room after expressing a creative choice. This greatly reduced the chance that it would be put up for discussion.

Just as Mindy Kaling was truly finding her rhythm in Hollywood, her world was turned upside down when her mother, Swati Chokalingam, died from pancreatic cancer. This devastating loss came in 2012 — one year after the diagnosis — on the very day that Fox picked up "The Mindy Project."

In an interview with Parade, Kaling said, "It was like a gift from God or my mom. I think she was giving me something so I didn't have to get crushed under the weight of my grief." As a physician, Chokalingam understood the gravity of her stage IV diagnosis. But that didn't make her untimely death any easier for Kaling, who described her mother to Rookie (via People) as "the single biggest role model in my life." 

Despite her anguish, Kaling stepped up to be an emotional support system. In an interview with the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (via GMA), a nonprofit working to bolster the lives of those with pancreatic cancer that she became a spokesperson for, Kaling said, "[My mother] was so strong and our family got a lot of strength from her, but I remember at that time, that really felt like the moment in my life where I had to become a real grown-up and I had to be strong for her. I wanted to be able to give her hope." 

When Mindy Kaling created the Netflix series "Never Have I Ever," she was heavily inspired by her own upbringing. Just as the show's lead character Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) struggles to fit in at school as a first-generation Indian American teenager, Kaling experienced similar hurdles in her youth. Growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her parents immigrated to from India, she didn't always feel immersed in her family's culture.

In an interview with The Indian Express, Kaling said, "My coming to terms with my Indian-ness is a big part of the show. I was born in the U.S., raised in a pretty white area, without speaking any Indian languages, so culturally I always felt I straddled the lines of two cultures."

It wasn't until she welcomed her first daughter into the world that she began to feel more connected to her culture, as well as her Hindu faith. Now, as she raises her children in Los Angeles, she realizes it doesn't have to be all or nothing. They can embrace their Indian roots and American upbringing. Kaling described her approach to American Kahani as being "kind of Hindu," which she said means "to have this connection deep inside my own heart to other people who look like us and have shared key experiences, thousands of miles away."

It took Mindy Kaling a while to be candid about how she was hired for "The Office" as part of an NBC diversity program. For some time, as the sole woman and minority in a room filled with Harvard-level writers, she questioned whether she was truly good enough to belong in such an environment. In fact, she regularly worried about getting fired.

Some of these fears were brought on by her own mind. Kaling said in an interview with The New York Times Magazine, "I remember being a staff writer at 'The Office' and feeling like, 'Everyone's going to know about me and the diversity program, and it means that I'm not as funny as everyone else.' I wish I hadn't felt that way."

However, those fears were also caused by actual incidents that left Kaling feeling singled out. When "The Office" was nominated for an Emmy for outstanding comedy series, Kaling was told by the TV Academy that, because the show had too many producers, she needed to complete a form and outline — in essay format — her contributions (including Kaling's favorite episode that she wrote, "The Injury"). According to Kaling, she was the only one asked to do so. She told Elle, "I had to get letters from all the other male, white producers saying that I had contributed, when my actual record stood for itself." Though the Academy refuted Kaling's claim that she was singled out, she stands by her account of what happened.

Growing up in the '80s and '90s, Mindy Kaling didn't see any fellow Indian women on mainstream television. But thanks to her own various projects, from "The Sex Lives of College Girls" to "Never Have I Ever" to "Velma," Kaling is changing who is seen on screen. The problem is, many South Asian women aren't exactly loving her work. Rather, they believe it's setting them back and amplifying negative stereotypes.

Ink Magazine published an editorial that summarizes South Asians' disdain for the characters that Kaling brings to life. It claims that the characters all share notable negative traits, including over-sexualization and being uncomfortable with their culture. Some on social media even allege that Kaling's shows, like "Velma," are racist and antisemitic. 

Kaling seems to be aware of the backlash, at least to some degree. For example, she knows that one "The Mindy Project" scene didn't go over well. Her character Mindy Lahiri's "aspirational" ID is that of a tall, thin, blue-eyed white woman. Still, she stands by her creations and doesn't appreciate the pressure put on her by the South Asian community. "It used to frustrate me a lot that I felt way more scrutinized by women and women of color than white showrunners were on shows with all-white casts," Kaling told Elle. "I just wanted to be a writer. I didn't necessarily look at it as being like, 'Well, you also have to be a spokesperson.' That's not what I signed up for."

The trials that come with single motherhood are vast. But for Mindy Kaling, who welcomed her first daughter, Katherine, in 2017, followed by Spencer in 2020, and Anne in 2024, one challenge impacted her the most — navigating this journey without her own mom. While she was perfectly fine not having a husband or partner, the thought of her kids never meeting their grandmother was torturous.

In the essay "Help Is on the Way" (via Motherly), Kaling said, "Mom wasn't there. She'd died eight years before, and now she wasn't going to meet her grandchild or help me do this thing that she had made look so easy." A bittersweet source of comfort is found in Katherine, who greatly reminds Kaling of her mom. She told PanCAM (via GMA), "I already see so many of her personality traits in my daughter, so that's something that is hard for me."

Of course, the everyday challenges of being a working single mom — especially a writer and producer of simultaneous projects — haven't evaded Kaling. Though it's taking some effort, she's learning to separate work and parenting, since the two require very different versions of herself. She said on "The Drew Barrymore Show," "I'm all about efficiency for work, which I think people appreciate, and then I go home and when you have three children under seven, if efficiency is one of the things you value most, you're gonna go crazy."

The on-again, off-again relationship of Kelly Kapoor and Ryan Howard on "The Office" is confusing, dysfunctional, and a little toxic, to say the least. Some of Kelly's worst moments are when she's pining after the temp. As for the actors behind these characters, their bond is also far from a textbook fairytale. During their years working together on the show, Mindy Kaling and B.J. Novak essentially had a situationship, sort of dating, sort of not — but always captured next to each other. Years later, they maintain a strong friendship. Novak gave a speech at Kaling's Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony, and Kaling named him the godfather of her children.

But as they continue to be strong parts of each other's lives, Kaling is regularly bombarded with speculation about the dynamic of her friendship with Novak. Many have even wondered if Novak is actually the father of her kids. Whenever asked, she attempts to set the record straight for good.

On "The Drew Barrymore Show" (via People), she said, "He's really part of our family, but we've known each other for a long, long time, and I think anyone who's been friends with someone for 18, 19 years and at one point dated and now doesn't, they maybe understand this. You have exes that you wouldn't necessarily marry now."

Over the past few years, Mindy Kaling has been extremely busy off-camera. Between wrapping up "Never Have I Ever" Season 4 in 2023 and "The Sex Lives of College Girls" Season 3 the following year, amongst other projects, Kaling has been flexing her writing and producing muscles. But there's one thing she's starting to miss — acting. Though she voiced Velma on the animated series of the same name, the last time Kaling physically appeared on screen was in 2023 as Audra for a handful of episodes of Apple TV's "The Morning Show." In fact, there was some surprise that she didn't at least make a brief appearance in "Never Have I Ever," which is largely inspired by her upbringing.

She said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, "'Never Have I Ever,' a show literally about an Indian American family in Southern California, and if I wasn't on that — what's wrong with me? I think there is a part of me that feels a little superstitious. I'm like, 'These seem to have gone well and I'm not in them so maybe I'll wait.'"

However, Kaling plans to put her superstitions to the side and once again double as an actor and creator in the near future — an experience she thoroughly enjoyed with "The Mindy Project." She said, "It is unbelievably fun and it's so efficient. I would love to do that again."