Mindy Kaling has donned many hats in her career including those of producer and director, apart from actor. In fact, she did this quite early on, when she worked as a producer for the classic comedy series The Office, which remains one of the peak points in her career. However, the 40-year-old has now revealed that she almost didn’t get recognition for it.
In an interview with Elle magazine, Mindy said that the TV Academy, which is in charge of the prestigious Emmy Awards, tried to drop her name from the list of producers for The Office, on the pretext that there were too many creatives in the credits. Except, Mindy says, no other producers’ names were considered to be dropped, save that of the only woman of colour and the junior-most person – her.
“They made me, not any of the other producers, fill out a whole form and write an essay about all my contributions as a writer and a producer,” The Mindy Project writer told Elle, adding that she had to get letters from all the other white, male producers to corroborate that she had contributed to the sitcom.
However, the TV Academy has denied these accusations, and responded to publications saying that no one person had been singled out. “There was an increasing concern years ago regarding the number of performers and writers seeking producer credits. At the time the Producers Guild worked with the Television Academy to correctly vet producer eligibility. Every performer producer and writer producer was asked to justify their producer credits,” the Academy said.
While this justification is not a requirement now, the Academy does till vet consulting-producer credits with the Producers Guild to ensure that everyone is working as a producer.
Mindy hit back at the Academy’s response to her statements subsequently. Taking to Twitter, Mindy said that she did not want to bring up the incident because The Office “was one of the greatest creative experiences” of her life, and she didn’t want to have a sour relationship with the Academy. However, she had worked very hard on the show and what allegedly happened with the Academy, was humiliating, she added.
“I had written so many episodes, put in so much time in the editing room, just to have the Academy discard it because they couldn’t fathom I was capable of doing it all. Thankfully I was rescued by my friends, the other producers,” Mindy tweeted. “The point is, we shouldn’t have to be bailed out because of the kindness of our more powerful white male colleagues. Not mentioning it seemed like glossing over my story. This was like ten years ago. Maybe it wouldn’t happen now. But it happened to me,” she added.
Later, she also tagged TV Academy, and called them out for not acknowledging the incident or apologising to her.
Hey, @TelevisionAcad! I have been a proud member for years. I was the 1st woman of color nominated for writing a comedy script. Why not say “years ago we prevented a deserving woman of color from getting credit for her accomplishments. We’re sorry and it would never happen now.”?
— Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling) October 10, 2019
Ultimately, Mindy’s name was retained in the credits for The Office though the show did not win an Emmy that year in 2007.
Mindy further quoted Toni Morrison in her interview with Elle to say, “In this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.” She added that no matter how successful she is, she will always have to deal with some racism and sexism. Regardless of the money she has, Mindy said she is “treated badly with enough regularity that it keeps me humble.”
Mindy revealed that she uses these experiences to find humour – though it continues to make her feel like an outsider, she said that it helps her as a writer.