Mindy Kaling on the pressures of TikTok for young comedians, her approach to 'Legally Blonde 3'

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — For many writers, the prospect of penning a sequel to one of the most beloved films of all time, on top of managing multiple writers’ rooms, might be enough pressure to freeze them in their tracks.

For Mindy Kaling, it’s just another day.

Speaking with USA TODAY at the Pendry West Hollywood hotel on Wednesday, Kaling, 43, barely had time to sit and relax after participating in a panel about her partnership with Zelle. Later that day, Kaling was expected at the writers’ rooms of Netflix’s “Never Have I Ever” and HBO Max’s “The Sex Live of College Girls” (both of which she executive produces). She was also set to meet with “Brooklyn 99” creator Dan Gore to discuss “Legally Blonde 3,” which they’re co-writing.

“In a good way, I’m not sort of allowed to have writers’ block,” Kaling says. “We just have deadlines, and you have to keep going. And that’s the nature of TV. It works very well if you’re impatient, and you just have to find a solution quickly.”

Plus, working hard has been a staple of Kaling’s TV career, which kicked off in 2005 with her turn as Kelly Kapoor on the hit sitcom “The Office.”

“It’s funny that I make it look easy, because I think the one constant in my life is how much effort I put into anything and how effortful my life has been,” she says. “Because getting to a position where you’re creating your own opportunities can be very hard and very challenging.”

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In addition to her rigorous work schedule, Kaling is also mom to her 4-year-old daughter Katherine and 1-year-old son Spencer.

Juggling parenthood with work can be tricky, but Kaling is grateful to have the help of a full-time nanny and two assistants. She also says her door is always open to her daughter whenever she’s working from home.

“I’m always writing, but what’s great is now I have an open door policy,” she says. “Unless I’m on a work Zoom, she can come in (my room), and the nature of my job is that I can stop for five minutes and hang out with her for a little bit.”

Over the course of her almost two-decade-long career, Kaling has seen firsthand how comedy has evolved since she started out. With social media sites like TikTok, she says up-and-coming comedians can face undue pressure to constantly post content in hopes of gaining exposure.

It’s something she’s thankful she never had to deal with.

“I grew up (with no) social media, so there wasn’t this expectation that I needed to be putting stuff out there as a creator,” she says. “That really benefited me, because I didn’t have that pressure at 18, 19, 20, 22 to be doing anything but learning.”

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Instead of trying to go viral, Kaling spent her young adult years honing her craft, which meant watching tons of TV and movies, like “Happy Gilmore,” “In Living Color” and “Saturday Night Live.”

“To me, the reason I’m successful is that when I was younger, I watched everything,” she says. “I really learned the formats.”

And knowing those formats, Kaling believes, is more valuable than TikTok clout when she and other showrunners are choosing whom to hire onto their writing staff.

“There’s so much comedy that’s coming out of TikTok, but the people that I am hiring are typically coming in through the more traditional route,” she says. “I would say 90% of the other showrunners I know who work on shows just want that good, old-fashioned script that follows the conventional TV standards, even if the story is really unusual and interesting.”

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As far as where comedy is headed, Kaling says audiences have begun embracing shows and films the industry would not have expected to succeed. Examples, she says, include Hulu’s gay rom-com “Fire Island,” starring Joel Kim Booster, and Ziwe’s eponymous Showtime variety series that tackles politics and culture with subversive humor.

“The way a comedy star looks now is really different than it used to,” she says. “I love where comedy is headed. If someone like Ziwe and Joel Kim Booster can be thriving now, that’s a cool, cool world.”

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Kaling’s got a lot on her to-do list. One daunting project is “Legally Blonde 3,” a sequel to the original 2001 film that catapulted Reese Witherspoon to fame. The film had another sequel, “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde,” in 2003.

The first two films saw Witherspoon’s bubbly attorney Elle Woods in her twenties, but Kaling says she and Gore have been imagining what Elle would be like in her forties for “Legally Blonde 3.” Witherspoon, 46, is set to reprise her role in the sequel.

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“It’s exciting, and it’s intimidating because I think it’s Reese’s most iconic role,” she says. “I’m used to things where I’m creating original characters and to adapt the tone of a previous hit movie, that’s a great writing challenge for me.”

Kaling aims to have a draft done this summer and send it off to Witherspoon.

“I just wanna make Reese happy,” she says.

Then it’s on to the next one.

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