Mindy Kaling has recounted being labelled “unattractive” by the media during the years in which The Mindy Project aired.
The now 43-year-old multihyphenate starred as successful obstetrician/gynaecologist Mindy who struggles to balance her personal and professional life in her cringe-comedy, which ran between 2012 and 2017.
In a new interview with Marie Claire, Kaling spoke about the criticism she endured while fronting the six-season sitcom.
“The amount of articles that were like, ‘It’s so good for a culture that this unattractive woman is finally on camera,’” she began.
“I didn’t know I was so unattractive until I was the star of my own show.”
She added: “So not having to see those things, that’s wonderful.”
Elsewhere in the interview, actor Priyanka Chopra praised Kaling for being a South Asian pioneer for a generation “who pushed open the doors and said, ‘Mainstream TV, here we come’”.
“[Now] Hollywood’s saying, ‘Okay, they’re not just a check in the box or a character that you throw in there so that we can pretend to be diverse,” the Quantico star said.
Kaling is currently working behind the scenes as the director, producer, and writer for the Netflix teen drama Never Have I Ever and HBO Max comedy-drama The Sex Lives of College Girls.
Meanwhile, she’s also working on developing the script for the forthcoming Legally Blonde 3.
Never Have I Ever season three returns to Netflix on Friday 12 August.
