Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me_ (And Other Concerns) - Mindy Kaling [40]
I was so embarrassed and angry I got up, stomped out the room, stole a twenty-four-pack of bottled water from the production office, kicked the bumper of Greg’s car, and left the studio.
This is what I get for trying to make the show better? I’m funnier and a better writer than every single one of those assholes, I thought, angrily. I pictured myself accepting the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center, and all those other writers watching from home, with the hope that I might acknowledge them, and I pointedly wouldn’t. Instead, I’d thank Thalia, the Greek muse of comedy. I’d freaking thank Thalia over those guys. I drove to a nail salon in a mini-mall a mile away and angrily sat down for a manicure.
“Señora has the day off?” the woman soaking my nails asked me, congenially.
“Nope! I got kicked out of work!” I replied. She stopped what she was doing.
“Oh, you fired?” she asked, concerned.
Hearing her say “fired” sent a spiky shudder down my spine. I looked at my soaking cuticles. I saw the soft hands of a babied comedy writer who had never known a hard day’s work. Did I really want to be unemployed? Did I want to jeopardize this amazing job I had dreamed about having since I was thirteen? Did I really want to be a receptionist at my mother’s ob/gyn office, where I would need to learn Spanish?
I immediately stood up, dried my hands, handed some cash to the puzzled woman, and raced back to work. I quietly entered the writers’ room and sat down.
My friend and fellow writer Lee Eisenberg looked at me quizzically and texted: WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?
I texted back: THE BATHROOM.
Greg did not acknowledge my absence, or find out that I’d kicked his car, and it blew over. The bottles of water remained mine, bwah ha ha! That evening, when I had my nightly chat with my mother on the way home from work, I made the mistake of telling her about what had happened. I was hoping to get consoled for a bad day at work. Instead she yelled at me. “Are you crazy? You owe everything to Greg Daniels!” Mom always says “Greg Daniels,” as though there were a few people at work with the first name Greg and I might not know who she was talking about. (There aren’t.) “Greg Daniels took a chance on you and changed your life! Don’t fight with Greg Daniels!” Dad got on the phone from the upstairs line, as he always does. He agreed with Mom. “I know you get upset, Min. But you have to be professional.” I am still trying to follow this terrific advice, only somewhat successfully, five years later.
The season six writers and editors.
STEVE CARELL IS NICE BUT IT IS SCARY
It has been said many times, but it is true: Steve Carell is a very nice guy. His niceness manifests itself mostly in the fact that he never complains. You could screw up a handful of takes outside in 104-degree smog-choked Panorama City heat, and Steve Carell’s final words before collapsing of heat stroke would be a friendly and hopeful “Hey, you think you have that shot yet?”
I’ve always found Steve gentlemanly and private, like a Jane Austen character. The one notable thing about Steve’s niceness is that he is also very smart, and that kind of niceness has always made me nervous. When smart people are nice, it’s always terrifying, because I know they’re taking in everything and thinking all kinds of smart and potentially judgmental things. Steve could never be as funny as he is, or as darkly observational an actor, without having an extremely acute sense of human flaws. As a result, I’m always trying to impress him, in the hope that he’ll go home and tell his wife, Nancy, “Mindy was so funny and cool on set today. She just gets it.”
Getting Steve to talk shit was one of the most difficult seven-year challenges, but I was determined