Deeper insights lost amid whipped cream humour
TEN years ago, I interviewed Mindy Kaling when she happened to be working on her first essay collection, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns).
Her essays, she said, would be deliberately breezy. At the time, Kaling was best known for playing boy-crazy Kelly Kapoor on NBC’s (for which she was also a prolific writer), so she was already associated with flippant – a bestseller – hoping to know more about her would, yes, learn about Kaling’s first-generation Indian American upbringing, her comedy-writer aspirations and big break on . But they would also ingest a solid helping of frothy listicles about “Best Friend Rights and Responsibilities” and “Franchises I Would Like to Reboot”. Kaling leaned into her alter ego – conceding people “assume I am Kelly Kapoor” anyway – by including a list of “Things Kelly and I Would Both Do”. Mostly, she kept the book light, as promised.
