In 'Late Night,' Mindy Kaling mines humor from her own workplace challenges
Jessica ZackJune 7, 2019Updated: June 10, 2019, 6:39 pm
Mindy Kaling, who wrote, co-produced and stars in the workplace and media satire "Late Night," plays Molly Patel in the film. Photo: Emily Aragones , Amazon Studios
" 'Diversity hire.' I kind of want to take back the term," says Mindy Kaling.
The boundary-breaking actor/writer/director had just called from a car in New Jersey to discuss her new movie "Late Night," opening Friday, June 14. Kaling, 39, wrote, co-produced and stars in the very funny and timely workplace and media satire as Molly Patel, a naive, comedy-obsessed chemical plant worker who lands her dream job writing jokes for Katherine Newberry (played by Emma Thompson), the famous British host of a late-night television talk show whose ratings are tanking.
It's completely understandable that Kaling of all people would want to reappropriate and take the sting out of a phrase she's heard people throw around freely as a pejorative throughout her career. Even though she's been a resounding success ever since being hired onto the writing staff of "The Office" at age 24 — a trajectory that's included six seasons on her own sitcom, "The Mindy Project," which aired its finale in 2017, six Emmy nominations and two best-selling memoirs — she still remembers wincing the first time she set foot in "The Office" writers' room. As the show's first woman and person of color, Kaling confronted — just as her "Late Night" character, Molly, does — the dubious, now-prove-yourself stares from all the young white men seated around the table.
It's a scene Kaling and director Nisha Ganatra re-created in "Late Night," down to the frat-room vibe of a hungover group of guys, including Hugh Dancy ("Hannibal") and Reid Scott ("Veep"), in fleece bro vests spitballing ideas for a female boss they don't really understand or even know. (The feeling is mutual; Newberry calls them by number, not name — an infamous trait Kaling pulled from a real-life TV personality she won't name.)
So, does Molly "lean in" to the boys club? Hardly. With no room for her to sit down, Kaling literally has to turn over a garbage can to create her own wobbly seat at the table.
"I was the diversity hire at 'The Office,' " recalled Kaling of her inspiration for "Late Night." "I came up through the NBC minority writers program, and I remember being so ashamed that other people knew, that it meant that I wasn't as good as all these Harvard guys who knew each other from before and had TV writing experience."
Before too long, she realized how unrealistic her "ideas of a meritocracy were, if you don't have a way in in the first place. What the program did was give me access to something the other writers were lucky enough to have. They knew the right people, they went to the right college — and this was just putting me on the same playing field."
Emma Thompson plays Katherine Newberry, the British host of a late-night television talk show with plummeting ratings. Photo: Emily Aragones, Amazon Studios
Kaling wanted to have Thompson's character, a former comedian (like Thompson herself) who is accused of hating women and faces losing her show to a young shock comic played by Ike Barinholtz, "to have a really strong opinion about this too, but her mind to get changed over the course of the movie, just as mine did."
Kaling laughed when complimented on managing to craft a crowd-pleasing, timely comedy out of such thorny work-culture issues. "The myth of the meritocracy. Internalized misogyny. Intersectional feminism and pay inequity between men and women. It sounds hilarious, right?"
She said she got the initial idea for "Late Night" 3½ years ago, "and wrote it slowly, on Saturdays, while still working during the week on 'The Mindy Project.' "
"This was before I had a kid, so it was a lot easier to get that much done," she said. (Kaling's a mother to a now-1-year-old daughter.)
On the heels of acting in such big-budget films as "A Wrinkle in Time" and "Ocean's 8" with majority-female casts, Kaling realized "that all these great actresses were saying there aren't deeply comic roles for women over the age of 50. I personally knew Academy Award-winning actresses who were starving for that (kind of role).
"And then Emma came to mind."
Kaling calls Thompson her "favorite living actor." She is the only living actor to have won Academy Awards for both acting ("Howard's End") and screenwriting ("Sense and Sensibility"). And yet, Thompson's comedy skills are woefully underappreciated, at least in the U.S. where she's associated with period drama and audiences are less aware of the fact that she launched her career doing political stand-up and sketch comedy.
"I pictured Emma in my mind the whole time I was writing," Kaling said. "And yes, I knew it was incredibly risky and a stupid career move writing a role for someone I'd never met and for all I know didn't even want to act anymore and lives in another country. I was just a huge fan."
Luckily, the two women share an agent, and when Kaling sent Thompson the finished script, "she emailed back over Labor Day weekend that she loved it and wanted to do it. It was so incredibly exciting," Kaling said.
Kaling could never imagine anyone else playing Katherine Newberry, and luckily she didn't have to.
"Emma truly has one of the quickest, most nimble comic minds and is just so funny," Kaling said. From seeing her on talk shows and giving acceptance speeches, I couldn't help thinking, 'How great would it be to write a great role for her to show off that side of herself?' "
"Late Night" (R) opens Friday, June 14, at Bay Area theaters.
Jessica Zack
Jessica Zack	Jessica Zack is a Bay Area freelance writer
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