Entertainment
The Office’s Mindy Kaling recalls writer’s devastating comment about her weight: ‘This is my greatest insecurity’
A writer suggested Mindy Kaling lose 15 pounds when she was 25 (Picture: Getty/Rex)
Mindy Kaling has opened up about a hurtful comment from a writer who told her to lose ’15 pounds’ and the effect it had on her going forwards.
The Office star, 42, revealed that when she was 25, a writer had suggested that her character ‘lose 15 pounds’, which tapped into her existing insecurities.
She explained on Good Morning America: ‘I remember thinking that I am already someone who is getting up before a call time at 6.30am to go to the gym to do the elliptical for 45 minutes.
‘This is my greatest insecurity and someone just called it out. When that moment happened, it was so huge to me.
‘And it was one of those things where you can’t express anger and hurt in a room like that.’
Mindy revealed that she channeled those conversations into her own writing for shows such as The Mindy Project, letting the characters say what she wished she could have responded in the moment.
She added: ‘You can only look back at painful things that have happened to you and say like: “Well, that was valuable because it taught me such and such a thing.”
‘Realising like: “Oh, people are scrutinising you”, and not only are they scrutinising you, they’re verbalising their displeasure with how I look because I don’t look a certain way.
‘That kind of dissonance has really affected so much of what I write about [and] the kind of characters I play.’
Mindy, who played Kelly Kapoor on The Office, admits there has been an underrepresentation of the average woman on screen for too long.
Mindy believes average-sized women are underrepresented on screen (Picture: Matt Baron/REX/Shutterstock)
She explained: ‘I felt that on TV, people were really excited if you were really thin, then you could be the lead.
‘Otherwise, you had to be like 250 pounds, and you had to be the slapstick comic relief. But what was crazy, what was left out, is just like this range of people which is a majority of American women.’
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The mother of two added that she is now the happiest she has ever been since having children: ‘I feel now, so much more happy and confident after having children than I did before this.
‘And each subsequent year of my life, I’m just feeling happier and happier and I weigh more than I did when I was 25, sleep less than I did before but my general level of happiness is just getting more and more.’
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