THE MINDY PROJECT
Mindy Lahiri is a brilliant OB-GYN, romcom queen, pop culture princess, pizza lover and hot mess! She’s our spirit animal.
SERIES PREMIERE! Season 1 SABC3 (*193) 19:30 Episode 1 Mindy’s prayer: “May he have the wealth of Mayor Bloomberg, the personality of Jon Stewart, the face of Michael Fassbender, the (whoops, adult moment) of Michael Fassbender.” NB!
The Mindy Project
Season 1 Fridays (from 10 August) SABC3 (*193) 19:30
Doctor Mindy Lahiri (Mindy Kaling) can deliver when it comes to babies in romantic comedy The Mindy Project (2012-2017), but when it comes to her love life… or life in general really… she falls short in the finest tradition of the romcom heroines she watches obsessively on TV. Even Mindy’s bestie
Gwen (Anna Camp, Sarah Newlin in vampire series True Blood, 2008-2014) can see it, telling Mindy in episode 1 after making a fool of herself at an ex’s wedding, “Well, your life isn’t a romantic comedy. Right now it seems more like a sad documentary about a criminally insane spinster.” But Mindy is fabulously and unapologetically imperfect, explains series creator, star and executive producer Mindy Kaling. “I fell in love with the format [on television] where the main character was flawed. It was something you had seen count- less times on sitcoms with men, but you hadn’t seen it with women. And I was so excited to play that part in a bigger capacity than I had.”
BALANCING ACT
Those flaws needed to be balanced. And while that job is often done by the actress being cute and having perfect hair in romcom movies, Mindy K was more ambitious with her show. “There’s almost a certain comedy percentage you learn with a lead character of how good they have to be at their job because it redeems them,” she says. “If the character was a terrible surgeon in addition to being selfish and unPC, she becomes a hateful doctor. My rule of thumb was that I want her to be as good of a doctor as I believe I am a comedy writer.” The moment Mindy L scrubs up and gets ready for doctor action, she puts on her face mask and cape with the same impact as if they were a superhero’s mask and cape. Her confidence and competence are absolute and she knows it, pointing out that “I’m, like, very smart and successful and I’m hot, but I don’t even know it, which makes me even hotter”.
LOOKING GOOD
Mindy’s appearance throughout the series is pure eye candy. “Mindy Lahiri gets away with a lot. She says some incredibly reprehensible things. But coming from someone who dresses in bright pastels and has the voice of Minnie Mouse, it’s more palatable or amusing. She loves all sparkly and shiny things that are inappropriate for work,” says Mindy K. Mindy brought in costume designer Salvador Perez (who worked on 2018 comedy series Champions) and he eventually ended up dressing both Mindy the actress and character. By the end of the series, we’ll have seen Mindy wear everything from 150 sets of pyjamas to daytime sequins at the office. “She was willing to be avant-garde – who wears a baseball tee with a sequin skirt and rhinestone necklace? It was Mindy being playful and not being the typical fashion girl,” says Salvador. “This was the first time in my career when someone was like, ‘Oh, I love that colour.’ I can do neon green and yellow together, yeah! There were no rules with Mindy and wardrobe and she let me just be creative.”
PREACH
We’re also willing to forgive Mindy L’s bad behaviour because what she does and says reflects what we’re thinking and would love to say – or do. Mindy tries to chat up a DJ at a nightclub, not to play a song though – she wants the Wi-Fi password. Or she will tell a friend that she’s great at keeping secrets, explaining that “largely because I don’t care and I will probably forget”. And she has a box of her ex-boyfriends’ hair to perform curses on them… when she’s not binge-watching TV in her PJS like the rest of us or lusting after a box of doughnuts. Party on, Mindys.