Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me_ (And Other Concerns) - Mindy Kaling [33]
Our pilot, based on our lives in Brooklyn, was set up at a network that no longer exists, which I will call SHT. It was called Mindy & Brenda. It was supposed to be Laverne & Shirley but sexier, I guess. Or like Mork & Mindy, replacing the alien character with Brenda as a sensible earthling.
We had a group of producers for the project, a few of whom I still think of with great affection. One was the legendary Tom Werner, who produced The Cosby Show and Roseanne. Tom would mention offhandedly that he’d caught a great baseball game the night before, and we’d later realize he was talking about sitting in his box at Fenway Park watching the Boston Red Sox, the Major League Baseball team he owned. I liked Tom a lot because he never got flustered or anxious, ever. We could burst into his office with Nancy Grace–level anger over a network note, and Tom would sit back in his chair and distract us with a great anecdote about Bill Cosby. He was our wise, tan, and detached uncle.
When we wrote the show, we assumed that we would be playing the parts of Mindy and Brenda. This turned out to be a misguided assumption, because SHT had no intention of ever allowing that. We were told we would have to audition for the parts of Mindy and Brenda. Mindy and Brenda. I don’t know why we were surprised. SHT at this time was a network known largely for casting models to act in television programs and hoping audiences would enjoy good-looking people saying lines they had learned phonetically. If I sound bitter, it’s because I am still a little bitter. Who wouldn’t be?
If you were ever considering sitting in a room with a group of actresses who bear a passing resemblance to you but are much, much thinner and more conventionally attractive, don’t do it. You might think it has value as an anthropological exercise but it doesn’t. I was sitting in an audition room with a bunch of girls who were the “after” picture to my “before.” My audition for Bombay Dreams was Christmas morning compared to this. This was how I found out that I could convincingly play Ben Affleck but not Mindy Kaling.
The network cast two stunningly pretty and perfectly sweet actresses. By the time we shot the pilot, though, the script made little sense. It had suffered from the daily changes made by SHT execs who put too much stock in “what is cool now?” Being “zeitgeisty” was the biggest criterion for the show. Being funny as maybe fifth important, after wardrobe choices, hair styling, cross-promotional opportunities with advertisers, and edgy sound effects. By the time we shot the script, Mindy & Brenda bore no resemblance to us, figuratively or literally. I believe in the shooting draft they were both fashion bloggers who worked at a cupcake bakery and were constantly referring to their iPods. (This was 2004, when iPods were the white-hot reference.) I’m not proud of that script.
The pilot didn’t get picked up, my agents were disappointed, and I was very, very happy. I’d had so little Hollywood experience that I wasn’t smart enough to know that this was a big career setback. I was just relieved that that show wouldn’t go forward with my name on it. The only other thing I had keeping me in Los Angeles was that I’d been hired as a staff writer for six episodes of a mid-season NBC show that was the remake of a British show called The Office.*
*Notice how I laid in all that dramatic irony here? Like in Titanic, when Kate Winslet’s character loved those weird paintings by a little-known artist named Picasso? And in the audience of the theater you were laughing to yourself because you knew Picasso turned out to be kind of a big deal? I’m trying to tell you that I’m Picasso.
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