

Mindy Kaling recalls a 'devastating' moment while on 'The Office' when a joke about her character's weight was pitched: 'This is my greatest insecurity'

mindy kaling february 2020
Mindy Kaling.
Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

  • Kaling says on while on "The Office" a joke was pitched where Kaling's character has to lose weight.
  • "This is my greatest insecurity and someone just called it out," she told "Good Morning America."
  • Kaling criticized the lack of diverse body types depicted by Hollywood.

Mindy Kaling is speaking out about body confidence and how it's hard to keep it while working in Hollywood.

In a recent interview with "Good Morning America," the Emmy nominee opened up about one incident during her time on "The Office" when a co-star, who she didn't name, suggested doing a joke about her weight.

Kaling, who was 24 at the time and says she was going to the gym daily in the mornings before work, recalled how it was proposed in another show's writers' room that their character tell Kaling's Kelly Kapoor character that she could lose 15 pounds.

"This is my greatest insecurity and someone just called it out," Kaling told "GMA," calling the moment "really devastating."

"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," she added. "That kind of dissonance has really affected so much of what I write about [and] the kind of characters I play."

Kaling, now 42 and a mother of two, also called out Hollywood's lacking representation of diverse body types.

Mindy Kaling in a blue top at a desk
Kaling in "The Office."
"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," Kaling said. "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."

"What if you're like a [size] 12 and you want to just live your life and look cute and date?" she added.

That's what has made Kaling proud of the reaction her Netflix show "Never Have I Ever" has received.

Focused on a young Indian American girl going through life in Southern California, Kaling believes the popularity of the show proves change is happening.

"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 said. "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."

Kaling is currently writing the script for "Legally Blonde 3" and voices the character Val on the Disney+ series "Monsters at Work."

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