In ELLE.com’s monthly series Office Hours, we ask people in powerful positions to take us through their first jobs, worst jobs, and everything in between. This month, we spoke to Mindy Kaling, the actress and writer/creator of The Mindy Project, Never Have I Ever, and The Sex Lives of College Girls, which is in its third season. In February, Netflix will release Kaling’s newest project, Running Point, a comedy loosely based on the front office of the Los Angeles Lakers, which stars Kate Hudson. Plenty of people want a career like hers, and this week, MasterClass released her class on scripting your own success. “So many people, particularly young people, want to take me to coffee to pick my brain, and I just want to save them the time and the coffee money,” Kaling says. “I’m excited for people to watch this class, because I remember being an ambitious, young person who didn’t have access [to this information].” Below, she shares what went into creating a MasterClass class, the pitfalls of working at a video store, and why juggling TV projects is like raising kids.
My first job
My first job was working at a video store in suburban Boston the summer between my junior and senior year of high school.
My worst job
That video store job. It was also a place where teenage boys could rent video games, and I didn’t understand that world at all. When I became slightly acquainted with some of the video games, I had a lot of distaste/horror about them. Working at a video store, I know that that’s a rite of passage for some of the great filmmakers, like Quentin Tarantino, and they discovered incredible filmmakers through that process. But I didn’t have the same sort of transcendent experience.
My biggest challenge
The most challenging job was also my favorite job, which was being the creator and star of The Mindy Project when I was in my thirties.
The job I learned the most from
One was The Office, because I had never written for camera before then. I was there for eight years, and it was like going to grad school twice in TV writing, production, and acting. I learned an incredible amount there as a kid in my twenties. And then I learned a huge amount on The Mindy Project about what it’s like to be an employer and a boss and how to be a good boss. I’ve been lucky. I’ve had some really wonderful bosses, but my two favorites are Howard Klein and Greg Daniels, who were my bosses on The Office.
What I thought about when I was creating my class for MasterClass
I took it so seriously, because I didn’t want to let down that ambitious, information-craving 22-year-old version of myself. I really thought, “OK, I have to get granular.” To me, details are the difference between something being good and great, like in great writing. In doing a great class for MasterClass, it was about how detailed can I get? I can’t just say, “Oh, and then I wrote the pilot, and then it got picked up, and then we started shooting.” It’s like, no, no, no, no, no. Take me through every moment of that.
The moment I knew I was going to be a writer
It’s just been the thing I’ve liked to do the most since I was five or six years old. I would go to my mom’s office after school—she was a doctor—and just be writing little stories or things that made me laugh. I always knew that’s what I wanted to do. It was that must-see TV in the ‘90s, shows like Cheers, Friends, Seinfeld, Wings, that really made me be like, I am in love with these worlds. I want to be the person that creates them.
How I prioritize projects
I feel lucky, because I can work on several things at once. Since The Mindy Project, I have co-created a lot of projects. That works, because it’s really social, and I get to work with my close friends and create things, as opposed to the solitary confinement of being a sole creator on a show and coming up with the world by myself. Being able to move back and forth between shows is so similar [to having] kids. The crises present themselves, and you just go to where you’re needed. You just need to do that until the show finishes triumphantly or gets canceled. And with children, I’m just constantly being like, how do I put out this fire and make sure they’re happy, healthy?
The best career advice I’ve received
It applies to career, but it also applies to life. When I was shooting A Wrinkle in Time, Oprah told me this advice that she’d heard from Maya Angelou. I know this is a double name-drop, but she said something that I’ve never stopped thinking about. Maya Angelou told her, “Do the best you can until you know better. And when you know better, do better.” We can only do the best we can in the time that we live in. It gives us grace to forgive things that we’ve done in the past, but also gives us the tough assignment of being really honest about, when we know better, doing better.
My proudest career moment
The show Never Have I Ever. When we were making it, we thought, “It would be really fun for us to watch a show about an Indian family in Southern California.” It felt very specific, but I loved it, and I loved these actors, and we had such a great writing staff. I could really relate to it, more than anything else that I’ve ever written. I was personally proud of it, but didn’t know how it would be received. And to this day, I think it’s my biggest success in terms of how many people it reached and how popular it was on Netflix. I learned a lesson from it, which is not to be cynical about the public. Even if they can’t personally relate to the specifics of someone’s story, people are yearning for good stories. They’re yearning to make connections, even if we’ve been made to believe that that’s not true.
My mantra
I’m Indian, so I should have a mantra. I don’t have a mantra, although I bet my life would be a lot better if I did. I’ll say this: I have a mantra that I never do, but I really admire. When I started The Mindy Project, my friend B.J. [Novak] gave me a monogrammed pillow that said, “Never complain, never explain.” I love that, but I’m constantly explaining and complaining, so I don’t know how useful it is.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.