The actress talked about how the Fox execs wanted her ethnicity to stand out more in the show
Mindy Kaling recently had a chat with Vogue India where she discussed COVID, spending quarantine with her daughter, and her career.
She reflected mainly on her eponymous show, The Mindy Project in which she stars as an Indian-American woman like her real self.
Why enthnicity isn’t everything
If you are a watcher of the Fox comedy series, it presents a humourous take on doctors at a New York hospital, their daily lives and relationships, with Mindy being the lead. While her Indian origins were brought up here and there, it was mostly for humour. According to Mindy however, the white execs at Fox had different plans initially.
She said that for many of them, the show had to be ethnicity-driven, and were more comfortable with the show being about an Indian woman who felt out of place in the United States and educated white people about her ways. Mindy said that even though she had indeed felt out of place as a dark-skinned Indian woman, but that wasn’t the most interesting thing.
The show did touch upon her ethnicity, mainly in the “Mindy Lahiri Is a White Man” episode where they reimagined what her life would be like if she was a white man. Mindy feels that she has let down some of her fans by making the show the way it is today.
She acknowledged how meaningful representation can be to people, but she felt that stories about women of colour going about their daily lives can be just as meaningful. More importantly, she feels that it’s not hers, or other WOC’s job to “educate white people” as the execs wanted her to do.
(Cover: Variety)