Not Suitable For Work Is Peak Mindy Kaling TV (Complimentary!)
One thing about me: I’m going to watch the shit out of a Mindy Kaling show. Since The Mindy Project, Kaling has been one of the few television masterminds who have consistently delivered romance on our small screens. The Mindy Project, Four Weddings And A Funeral, Never Have I Ever, The Sex Lives of College Girls and Running Point could all be classified as romantic comedies. And in their own unique, incredibly Kaling ways, they’re all great (I said what I said). Now, romance is having a moment onscreen, Kaling is back with another sitcom that would be incomplete without its love stories. Not Suitable For Work premiered on Hulu earlier this month and so far, people are sleeping on how good it is. The show follows five ambitious twenty-somethings navigating the messy overlap of career ambition, friendship, romance, and personal reinvention in Manhattan. I devoured the series in one sitting and it’s an entertaining, funny, refreshing watch. The romances dominated TV right now are brooding, sexy, and serious. This series is the exact opposite. It follows Adults and I Love LA in delivering a comedy about a group of young friends messily figuring out life, but its clumsy commentary on work and love feels fresh. Plus, each of Not Suitable For Work‘s leads feel real and rounded — there are no token sidekicks. This ensemble is made up of AJ Pascarelli (Ella Hunt), a driven first-year investment analyst trying to prove herself in the high-stakes world of finance; her best friend Abby Chilukuri (Avantika), a fashion-obsessed assistant to a demanding celebrity stylist; Davis Beau Bradley Barrett III (Will Angus), a hopeless romantic whose finance bro bravado masks a surprisingly earnest search for love; Josh Teitelbaum (Jack Martin), an idealistic aspiring journalist with plenty of opinions; and Kel Washington (Nicholas Duvernay), a medical student balancing professional expectations with dreams of becoming an actor. Rounding out the cast is Jay Ellis as Bill Gibson, AJ’s charismatic boss, alongside recurring players including Constance Wu, Victor Garber, Ego Nwodim, and Judy Gold. Equal parts workplace comedy, romantic chaos, and coming-of-age story, the series feels like Mindy Kaling’s sharpest exploration yet of what it means to be young, ambitious, and slightly lost in New York. Below, I talked to Kaling over Zoom about what ingredients she always sprinkles into her shows, why Jay Ellis is so good at playing jerks, yearning versus sex on TV, and the feedback she gets on her representations of South Asian women. A Mindy Kaling show is always going to give us romance. You’re going to give us competency porn, and you’re going to give us a white man we root for against our better judgment — Mindy Kaling: I love competency porn, that makes me so happy. What would you say are the core tenets of a Mindy Kaling show? MK: The core tenets of a Mindy Kaling show… I think there are people with a chip on their shoulder. I think ambition is a big part of it, and I think another part of it is people who think they know exactly what they need, but the audience is like, I am not so sure about that. Usually children of immigrants are portrayed. I really find that juicy. I love the friction of the certain expectations that you have as a child of immigrants, and how you’re going to defy it or fall in line. As a child of immigrants and of an immigrant doctor, I really felt Kel’s storyline. MK: I’m so happy you said that, because researching what it’s like to be the child of a Nigerian immigrant was so interesting to me — how specific that is, just how much expectations there are. That was really fun, and as an Indian American with a parent who’s a doctor, the push towards medical school and the disappointment, and not showing any interest in that at all. I do love dramatizing that. There’s a lot of very high production value sex on TV now that there wasn’t when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. In my shows, I feel like you see a lot of characters who are horny or wanting intimacy, but they don’t always get it.mindy kaling You’ve been giving us romance on TV for a long time, but it does feel like we’re in this moment where romance on TV is back. MK: In a sexy way! Sexy romance. There’s a lot of very high production value sex on TV now that there wasn’t when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. In my shows, I feel like you see a lot of characters who are horny or wanting intimacy, but they don’t always get it. All my shows like Never Have I Ever and The Sex Lives of College Girls, and then this show, particularly with the Davis character, it’s like people who long to be wanted, but we don’t show a lot of it. But when I turn on any other channel on TV, it’s like you’re actually getting it, and I think that’s been a big shift in culture in the past couple years. It’s great. Why do you think that is, and why do you gravitate towards the yearning versus the sex? MK: I like them both
Black News 
One thing about me: I’m going to watch the shit out of a Mindy Kaling show. Since The Mindy Project, Kaling has been one of the few television masterminds who have consistently delivered romance on our small screens. The Mindy Project, Four Weddings And A Funeral, Never Have I Ever, The Sex Lives of College Girls and Running Point could all be classified as romantic comedies. And in their own unique, incredibly Kaling ways, they’re all great (I said what I said). Now, romance is having a moment onscreen, Kaling is back with another sitcom that would be incomplete without its love stories.
Not Suitable For Work premiered on Hulu earlier this month and so far, people are sleeping on how good it is. The show follows five ambitious twenty-somethings navigating the messy overlap of career ambition, friendship, romance, and personal reinvention in Manhattan. I devoured the series in one sitting and it’s an entertaining, funny, refreshing watch. The romances dominated TV right now are brooding, sexy, and serious. This series is the exact opposite. It follows Adults and I Love LA in delivering a comedy about a group of young friends messily figuring out life, but its clumsy commentary on work and love feels fresh. Plus, each of Not Suitable For Work‘s leads feel real and rounded — there are no token sidekicks.
This ensemble is made up of AJ Pascarelli (Ella Hunt), a driven first-year investment analyst trying to prove herself in the high-stakes world of finance; her best friend Abby Chilukuri (Avantika), a fashion-obsessed assistant to a demanding celebrity stylist; Davis Beau Bradley Barrett III (Will Angus), a hopeless romantic whose finance bro bravado masks a surprisingly earnest search for love; Josh Teitelbaum (Jack Martin), an idealistic aspiring journalist with plenty of opinions; and Kel Washington (Nicholas Duvernay), a medical student balancing professional expectations with dreams of becoming an actor. Rounding out the cast is Jay Ellis as Bill Gibson, AJ’s charismatic boss, alongside recurring players including Constance Wu, Victor Garber, Ego Nwodim, and Judy Gold. Equal parts workplace comedy, romantic chaos, and coming-of-age story, the series feels like Mindy Kaling’s sharpest exploration yet of what it means to be young, ambitious, and slightly lost in New York.
Below, I talked to Kaling over Zoom about what ingredients she always sprinkles into her shows, why Jay Ellis is so good at playing jerks, yearning versus sex on TV, and the feedback she gets on her representations of South Asian women.
A Mindy Kaling show is always going to give us romance. You’re going to give us competency porn, and you’re going to give us a white man we root for against our better judgment —
Mindy Kaling: I love competency porn, that makes me so happy.
What would you say are the core tenets of a Mindy Kaling show?
MK: The core tenets of a Mindy Kaling show… I think there are people with a chip on their shoulder. I think ambition is a big part of it, and I think another part of it is people who think they know exactly what they need, but the audience is like, I am not so sure about that. Usually children of immigrants are portrayed. I really find that juicy. I love the friction of the certain expectations that you have as a child of immigrants, and how you’re going to defy it or fall in line.
As a child of immigrants and of an immigrant doctor, I really felt Kel’s storyline.
MK: I’m so happy you said that, because researching what it’s like to be the child of a Nigerian immigrant was so interesting to me — how specific that is, just how much expectations there are. That was really fun, and as an Indian American with a parent who’s a doctor, the push towards medical school and the disappointment, and not showing any interest in that at all. I do love dramatizing that.
There’s a lot of very high production value sex on TV now that there wasn’t when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. In my shows, I feel like you see a lot of characters who are horny or wanting intimacy, but they don’t always get it.
mindy kaling
You’ve been giving us romance on TV for a long time, but it does feel like we’re in this moment where romance on TV is back.
MK: In a sexy way! Sexy romance. There’s a lot of very high production value sex on TV now that there wasn’t when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. In my shows, I feel like you see a lot of characters who are horny or wanting intimacy, but they don’t always get it. All my shows like Never Have I Ever and The Sex Lives of College Girls, and then this show, particularly with the Davis character, it’s like people who long to be wanted, but we don’t show a lot of it. But when I turn on any other channel on TV, it’s like you’re actually getting it, and I think that’s been a big shift in culture in the past couple years. It’s great.
Why do you think that is, and why do you gravitate towards the yearning versus the sex?
MK: I like them both. I love yearning, and I love sex. I think it’s both. When you have a show like Heated Rivalry, which does both really well, yearning and sex, that’s why I think it’s such a massive hit. I think people’s attitudes towards the depiction of intimacy on screen has changed a lot. I just watched Wuthering Heights as well, and I was like, ‘whoa, this is so, so sexy’, and so it’s so gratifying. So, I mean, none of this is profound. I think we love it. I think with me and Charlie Grandy, who’s my wonderful showrunner, we really love characters who want to be in sexy situations and think they’re ready for it, but especially in this show the kids are so young and inexperienced. They have that thing of like, yeah, I’m ready for anything. And I think especially what you find out in this show is that they’re not. When AJ embarks on this relationship with Bill, she thinks she can handle it. She thinks so but she doesn’t really know how the world works.
Jay Ellis has had to answer for a lot with his Insecure character, Lawrence, and I think he’s gonna have to answer for some more with this role as Bill.
MK: I think with Jay — I’m sure you’ve talked to him before — he’s such a good guy, and he’s so handsome. There’s this urge to make him play against type. I absolutely loved Insecure, I loved Lawrence, I loved how Issa wrote him, and we felt really lucky to work with him, but he’s just one of those guys that, when he does those things, he radiates likability so much. It reminds me of Kate Hudson where you want to root for them, even when they’re doing things you don’t agree with. So that’s really rare in a performer, and so we were lucky to have him on the show.
I feel so lucky to have worked on so many different shows that I get to explore different ways of being [South Asian], because you’re right, we are not a monolith.
mindy kaling
You have written a few different South Asian women leads now, and none of them are the same. How important is that for you, to show that women of color, and especially South Asian women, are not a monolith?
MK: Thank you. I feel so lucky to be someone making TV and being able to cast these incredible actresses and roles, like we, I was thinking that get to work with Avantika before this Amrit Kaur in Sex Lives of College Girls, and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, and you know, Poorna Jagannathan, Richa Moorjani and I love that. I feel so lucky to have worked on so many different shows that I get to explore different ways of being, because you’re right, we are not a monolith, It’s just really great to see the amount of South Asian women behind the scenes too. That’s the reason why I’m even able to tell these stories. It’s not just me doing them. Having people like Amina Munir and Akshara Sekar and directors like Geeta Patel and Anu Valia, who are there to make sure that we get it right and they’re just as invested as am I to show characters that are new and not something that we feel like we’ve seen before. Thank you for the compliment and I think it’s really important. I feel lucky because it’s not just me, I have a whole team that’s helping me do it.
I think it does come across on screen. When you are somebody in that position, there is a lot of conversation around whether you are representing your culture “correctly” and it comes with a lot of pressure.
MK: For the record, I see the feedback. Our community is starved for representation, and so when we see anything and we don’t feel like we agree with it, or it’s not exactly how we would have done it, of course, I get a lot of feedback. So I feel very strongly that the work speaks for me more than I can talk about the work, and so I hope that my community really likes the Abby character and thinks that Avantika in this role is something new. I hope that people respond to it and like it as much as I do.
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