Mindy Kaling

She got onto The Office because she co-wrote a scrappy Off-Broadway play about Matt Damon and Ben Affleck that won the New York International Fringe Festival's Best Overall Production in 2002. Greg Daniels saw it and hired her to write the American version. She came in without a WGA card or health insurance. By the end of the run, she'd written 24 episodes, more than any other staff writer, and had become an executive producer. Playing Kelly Kapoor was almost an afterthought.

She pivoted from performer to power player so thoroughly that most people miss what she's actually built. Kaling International has generated multiple hit shows: Never Have I Ever ran four seasons on Netflix and hit 40 million households in its first season alone, while The Sex Lives of College Girls ran three seasons on Max. In 2025 she launched Running Point on Netflix, got a Hulu series order for Not Suitable for Work after a bidding war, received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star, and is co-writing Legally Blonde 3. The producing credits are outpacing the acting ones by a lot.

Her legal name is Vera Mindy Chokalingam. The "Mindy" came from Mork & Mindy: her parents, living in Nigeria before emigrating, wanted a recognizable American name for their daughter. She graduated from Dartmouth with a playwriting degree in 2001 and was already interning at Late Night with Conan O'Brien as a 19-year-old sophomore. She co-wrote the Matt & Ben play that launched her career with college best friend Brenda Withers. Her entire origin story reads like it shouldn't have worked.