NYLON - September 2008 - (Page 156) HIDDEN TALENTS MINDY KALING, WRITER/ ACTOR, THE OFFICE IT TAKES MORE THAN JUST ACTORS TO GET A SHOW ON THE AIR. HERE, EIGHT PEOPLE WHO MAKE MAGIC BEHIND THE SCENES. BY KATE WILLIAMS NYLON: How did you start writing? MINDY KALING: When I was a kid, I would work in my mom’s office. She had a typewriter and I would write these little plays. They were always comic. Looking back at them, they could not be less interesting or funny. But I think that’s when I really decided I liked writing comedy. Actually, I liked writing dialogue. I never liked writing essays or poetry or anything like that. NYLON: How did you end up working on The Office? MK: After college, I went to New York and my best friend and I wrote this play, Matt and Ben [in which she and her friend Brenda Withers played Matt Damon and Ben Affleck preGood Will Hunting], and Greg Daniels [executive producer of The Office] saw the play and hired me as a writer, then subsequently as a performer. NYLON: How do you guys write the scripts? MK: Every comedy has a room where the writers sit around a table, eating junk food and getting really fat, and we pitch ideas that would be funny for our situation and the characters we have. We’ll fuck around like that for three days, until finally Greg decides that one of us has to go earn our pay, and that person goes off for a week to write the script. When it’s my turn to do it, I’ll spend the first five days watching Law and Order reruns, and then the last two days trying frantically to come up with something and making my boyfriend write out the script. I’ve just been a procrastinator since I was, like, nine—I can’t work unless there’s a feeling of terror. NYLON: Do you ever throw out ideas that get totally shot down? MK: Umm, daily. I have a reputation for writing stuff that is, or coming up with ideas that are, just a little off. Sometimes it works and I’m really proud of it, like there’s an episode where Michael grills his foot on a George Foreman grill. There’s a running joke in the room about how I want Michael to find a stop on the underground railroad in an old willow tree in the back of the office. Everyone thinks it is such an incredibly bad idea. And someone pointed out that in A Different World, they find a stop on the underground railroad behind Hillman College. So not only is it a stupid and unrealistic idea, it’s not even original. PHOTOGRAPHED BY LAUREN DUKOFF stylist: skye stewart-short. hair: anthony cristiano at artistsbytimothypriano.com. makeup: laverne caracuzzi at helen cohen entertainment management. cardigan by trina turk. 156 http://www.artistsbytimothypriano.com
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