Mindy Kaling may be attached to streaming series today as varied as “Running Point” (Netflix), “The Sex Lives of College Girls” (Max), “Never Have I Ever” (Netflix) and the new “Not Suitable for Work” (Hulu), but she admits that transferring “The Mindy Project” to Hulu after Fox canceled the sitcom wasn’t supported by some of her closest collaborators.
B.J. Novak, who memorably co-starred with Kaling on “The Office” and wrote, produced and guest starred on “The Mindy Project,” advised her at the time that just letting it die on network after three seasons was the “classier” move.
“The show was never a hit, we were always waiting with bated breath to see if we were going to get picked up. Every year,” Kaling said on Wednesday’s episode of the “Las Culturistas” podcast with hosts Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. “Then we got canceled.”
“Then it went to Hulu, which at the time, it was just, like, that show about the ghost,” she added, likely talking about the Kal Penn-starring “Deadbeat,” which ran for three seasons on the streamer.
“I remember, and B.J. would corroborate this,” Kaling continued. “I was like, ‘B.J., I think we’re going to go to Hulu.’ He was like, ‘I don’t — what even is that? Maybe it’s classier to just let it die instead of going onto this other thing.’
“And that would’ve been the classier thing,” she admitted, “but I was like, I’ve gotta just keep doing this … I don’t want them to win by canceling it. So we did it, and then all the writers stayed and that was such a huge risk. But it never felt like it was a success during it. It was always a slog.”
The conversation came as Yang praised Kaling for her body of work — and specifically for how natural it felt to see her leading and producing her own series like “The Mindy Project” after her success on “The Office.”
“Obviously going back, there are things I would do differently. But I’m happy that it had some impact,” Kaling responded, later adding that she felt the project was consistently under emphasized scrutiny from viewers.
“Bowen, I don’t know if you feel this way, but there was always endless scrutiny about representation,” she said. “And some of it, looking back at it, I was like, ‘Oh, that was good, I should’ve done that differently.’ And then some of it was like, ‘Why are you picking on me again?’
“Like, if it wasn’t my appearance then it was the way that the show was cast. And I’m complaining about it now, and some of it was really valid. But it was just a different time. So it’s so gratifying — I sound so needy, but it’s so nice to hear it made an impact on you guys.”
“The Mindy Project” went on to run for three seasons on Hulu after jumping to the streamer for Season 4.
In a 2016 interview with IndieWire, Kaling said that the pivot to Hulu was an opportunity for more creative freedom outside of the network format.
“When Hulu happened, it presented an opportunity to say, if what I’ve been wanting to do is write movies, write characters who are doing things that can’t be done on a network sitcom — this is the opportunity to do it on my very own show,” she said.
Watch Kaling’s full “Las Culturistas” interview below.
