Mindy Kaling Recalls Being Plucked from “The Office ”Writers' Room to Star in Episode by B.J. Novak: 'Didn't Have to Be a Straightforwardly Hot Woman’

Victoria EdelTue, June 30, 2026 at 6:09 PM UTC

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Mindy Kaling in 'The Office'Credit: Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty -

Mindy Kaling opened up about being hired for The Office as a writer before being cast on the show as Kelly Kapoor

She said that she was asked to join the cast because of the second episode of the show, titled 'Diversity Day'

Kaling said that she's grateful to Greg Daniels, who adapted the original BBC series, who didn't want to cast 'a straightforwardly hot woman'

Mindy Kaling got hired on The Office as a writer, but soon found herself appearing on camera, too.

Kaling, 47, opened up about her time on The Office on the June 30 episode of Good Hang with Amy Poehler. Poehler, 54, noted that Kaling was hired to write for the sitcom, which premiered in 2005, after she co-wrote and starred in the play Matt & Ben, a two-woman show that also starred Brenda Withers. In the show, they played Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, whose lives are changed when the script for Good Will Hunting falls from the sky.

“You go from Matt and Ben to basically being the only woman in a writer's room at The Office. You are the only woman and the only woman of color in a incredibly smart, hyper-talented and nice group of men, but still it is your first job,” Poehler said.

Kaling said that the environment was “competitive.” She explained, “A lot of people now will be like, ‘Wow, I can't believe you got hired in The Office. You were so young. You must feel so great.' When I look at the people who were I was working with, they had been working since they were 21 and had already had Emmys so I still felt like I was behind.” She said that being “friendless” in Los Angeles and having “no hobbies” made her obsessive about work and the other writers, including Mike Schur, B.J. Novak and Greg Daniels (who adapted the original BBC series that The Office was based on).

Mindy Kaling in 'The Office'Credit: Byron Cohen/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank

“I really wanted to impress them. I really wanted to date some of them. And I was varying degrees of successful in those pursuits,” she said.

Poehler then asked how Kaling made the jump from the writer's room to appearing on the show as Kelly Kapoor, a customer service representative for the show's paper company, Dunder Mifflin.

“The way that I got the part was I think B.J. had written this episode called 'Diversity Day,'” the writer, whose new show Not Suitable for Work premiered on Hulu this month, said. She called the episode — which saw Steve Carell's Michael Scott try to run his own diversity seminar but end up offending everyone — “one of the funniest episodes” of the whole series.

Daniels, 63, decided that it wouldn't be as funny if the cast was “all white,” because he “needed to be offending some people.” She said, “And so I was so lucky to be in the writers' room and being Indian, because he's like ‘Would you play someone that he offends and then slaps him?' ”

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Kaling said that being a comedy writer was already a “dream come true,” so “to be on camera was just like outrageous.”

She said that during the “aughts,” it felt “groundbreaking” to be on a show “where you didn't have to be a straightforwardly hot woman.” Kaling said, “This is a real Greg Daniels thing: what is beautiful is what is real. And that wasn't very many shows.”

Mindy Kaling on June 4Credit: Tiffany Rose/Getty

Kaling's turn as Kelly sparked numerous memes, which she said she loves. “It makes me feel young,” she said, adding that it's a “mic drop” to send one in conversations with people. Poehler, herself the subject of many memes, said she's never been sure if she can send them.

Poehler said that Kaling's Kelly is the “definition” of someone with “main character energy.” Kaling said, “She is a tertiary character, but believes she's a main character. She has one line every three episodes.”

“She thinks she's the hottest person at the office and feels bad for Pam and thinks Ryan's a huge catch. And that she's like destined for fame,” she said. She added it's “so fun” to play a delusional character, and then she got to do the same thing on her sitcom The Mindy Project.

Kaling, who wrote more episodes of The Office than any other writer, left the show at the beginning of the ninth season. In the series finale at the end of the ninth season, she returned to the series and ran away with Novak's Ryan.

Last fall, a spin-off of The Office, The Paper, premiered on Peacock. Season two of The Paper will premiere this September.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”