Mindy Kaling first caught the public’s eye when she appeared in the documentary-like sitcom The Office alongside funny people like Steve Carrell, but now the comedian/actress is taking the TV world by storm again with her very own show, The Mindy Project! Find out more about her in her Kidzworld Bio.
Massachusetts Mindy
Mindy was born and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but she wasn’t always known as Mindy. Her real name is Vera Chokalingam, but her parents loved the old sitcom Mork and Mindy so much that when they moved to the states from Nigeria, they nicknamed their daughter Mindy, thinking it would be a cute American name for her. Her father is an architect and her mother is a doctor, but once Mindy entered university at Dartmouth college, she knew that her calling was being funny, whether it was writing for a humor-based college paper or getting on stage with a comedy troupe.
The Office
Before she hit the big screen, Mindy already had people bending over double in their seats when she and her friend wrote the play Ben and Matt (a fictional story about the friendship between Hollywood BFFs Matt Damon and Ben Affleck). The play was named one of Time magazines “Top Theatrical Events of the Year”! People soon started seeing she was a star on the rise, and won bit parts in movies and TV shows like, Saturday Night Live, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Night at the Museum: Battle at the Smithsonian.
Her real break came though when she got a job with the TV show The Office, starting out as one of their writers and eventually making her way to the screen as office worker Kelly Kapoor. Mindy wrote, produced, directed and acted in many episodes. She was even nominated for an Emmy for an episode that she wrote!
The Mindy Project
After honing her skills doing everything from writing to producing on The Office, Mindy was ready to be captain of her own ship, and created The Mindy Project which debuted in Winter 2012 on FOX. The Mindy Project is a sitcom where she plays a women’s health doctor constantly on the search for romance.
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