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Mindy Kaling is looking back at how her real-life experiences have shaped her career.
Recalling how when she was 25, and working as a writer and actor, one of her co-writers on the show suggested making a joke about how her character could lose 15 pounds.
“This is my greatest insecurity and someone just called it out,” she told “Good Morning America” on Thursday. “It’s really devastating.”
Kaling didn’t name the show.
“I had a reckoning where I’m like, ‘People are scrutinizing [me], and not only are they scrutinizing [me], they’re verbalizing their displeasure with how I look because I don’t look a certain way. That kind of dissonance has really affected so much of what I write about [and] the kind of characters I play,” Kaling continued.
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“Almost all of those kinds of things [in my work] come from something really real.”
Fast forward and Kaling is a Hollywood hitter, creating a number of successful shows like “Never Have I Ever”. One of the reasons Kaling’s shows are so well received is because they embrace diversity. Something the mom of two said wasn’t always shown.
“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 like this range of people which is a majority of American women over the age of 24,” she said. “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. That has really changed, I think.”
Speaking of her Netflix show that has just been renewed for a third season, Kaling added, “I was obsessed with TV as a kid and it informed my worldview and it informed who I was attracted to. It informed so much, right? And it makes me so happy that this show can be on Netflix, 40 million people can watch it, it’s No. 1 around the world and it stars a girl who is a young, dark-skinned Indian girl. She’s real, and she dates and boys like her, boys hate her, she goes in and out of drama, fights with her friends, but she’s normal and she’s the point of view character and so you can look to that and feel seen, to use a phrase that people much younger than me use.”
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Noting that a show like that would have been “really valuable” to her when she was growing up.
The mom of two also addressed how quickly many Hollywood celebs get back in shape after giving birth.
“Having children really changes your body,” she said. “Most of the stories in Hollywood are these insane glow-ups like three months after someone gives birth and I’m like, ‘Why can’t I do that?’ I put myself to the same standard. I want to have that same bounce back. And the truth is it just didn’t happen after my son was born.”