Mindy Kaling talks TV representation and the ‘Diwali’ episode of ‘The Office’

Over the years, Mindy Kaling has become a poster child for on-screen representation and diversity. 

In 2004, Kaling was hired as a writer on The Office, but quickly went on to star in the workplace comedy as the bubbly, gossip-loving customer service rep, Kelly Kapoor. While Kaling acted on the show, she also wrote fan-favorite episodes, including “The Dundies,” “The Injury,” and of course, “Diwali,” in which everyone at Dunder Mifflin attends the celebration of a Hindu holiday. 

On the latest episode of the , former co-stars Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey caught up with Kaling about working on The Office, what it was like having have her parents guest star on the show, and how much the the “Diwali” episode meant to her.

“Diwali,” the sixth episode of Season 3, was written by Kaling and directed by Miguel Arteta. It aired on Nov. 2, 2006, and was watched live by a 8.8 million people. The episode marked the first depiction of the Hindu festival on an American comedy series, and as Mashable Entertainment Reporter Proma Khosla notes, it served as “a master class in representation.”

“I have to say, I feel really lucky that Greg [Daniels, showrunner of The Office] wanted to do this episode,” Kaling said before referencing a similar spotlight episode in her latest show, Never Have I Ever. “Angela was on my most recent show and we did an episode about Ganesh Puja. There’s so many more shows on the air with diverse casts and everything, but the fact that [The Office episode aired] on prime time television [in 2006]… That’s cool! Go us for doing that!”

“One of the harder things when you write the ‘Diwali’ episode is that we couldn’t believe Greg said yes. I had to kind of confront the fact that I’m Indian-American, I don’t know very much about the holiday, and the bad experience of being Indian-American and talking about how you don’t know very much about the holiday kind of became a big part of the episode, which I loved,” Kaling explained.

“I like that Greg thought that was just as interesting — if not more interesting — than me going and like pretending that my family and I were these experts at Hindu holidays,” she said. “I really like that Kelly has this defiant attitude about [Diwali,] that it’s really important, while also not knowing anything about it at all.”

How Mindy’s parents got cast on The Office

Fans may already be aware that Kaling’s actual parents — her dad, Avu Chokalingam, and her mom, Swati, who died from pancreatic cancer in 2012 — played Kelly’s parents in “Diwali.” But Kaling told Fischer and Kinsey the details of how exactly they wound up getting cast on the show.

“We only cast my parents in it, which just seems like a complete act of nepotism and favoritism, because we had auditioned the parts and Greg felt that the actors we found in that age group (late 50s/early 60s) were either too theatrical for the style of acting on our show, or too stilted, because they had no acting experience,” Kaling said. “Now, I’m the first to say that my parents’ acting was also very stilted, but [Greg] was like, ‘At least they bear some familial resemblance to you, so we’ll put them in there.”

Kaling revealed that director Miguel Arteta “fell in love with” her dad’s acting and personality. So much so, that he wanted to bring her parents back for a future scene, but Kaling declined. “I did not feel so established on the show as a writer or as an actor that I felt so comfortable having them there,” she said. “I was really worried about it seeming unprofessional or that they would tell boring stories to people and Jenna would be like, ‘Hey, can you get this guy away from me?’ to an Assistant Director.”

Despite Kaling’s concerns, everyone on the show loved having her parents around. “My favorite line in the episode was, ‘How long have you been married to the cheerleader?’ And that was your dad!” Kinsey gushed.

Kaling said that to this day her dad receives residual checks from the show, and “it’s like the thing he’s most proud of.”

Behind-the-scenes of “Diwali”

The episode was mostly filmed in the gym of Grant High School in Los Angeles, which just so happened to be the high school that Melora Hardin (Jan Levinson) attended as a teen.

After set designer Michael Gallenberg did a fair amount of research on Diwali celebrations, his team set out to decorate the gym, and the hunt for background actors began.

“Our casting office worked with Central Casting — a casting agency in LA that specializes in background actors and filling out picture,” Kinsey said. “Central Casting reached out to a lot of the Indian community here in Los Angeles to hire those background players. Al in all, Kent [Zbornak, producer on The Office] said we had 100 extras working this episode, and every single one of them brought their own beautiful costuming for us to use.”

“Kent also hired a professional dance company to come and lead us in some of the dances,” Fischer said. “He found a company called NDM Dance Productions and he hired their director/choreographer Nakul Dev Mahajan, and [he] hired eight dancers. He choreographed and rehearsed their dance in the morning… and we filmed it later in the afternoon.”

“It was super cool and it really did end up feeling like a real party, like a real celebration,” Fischer said.

Mindy’s love for The Office

When Kaling got hired as a writer for the six episodes of The Office‘s first season, she had her off-broadway play, Matt & Ben, and an Arrested Development spec script under her belt.

“The climate for hiring writers if you were an un-tested, Indian-American woman was very different 16 years ago than it is now,” Kaling said. “I was coming back for six episodes. Such a small first season. But I was so new it was just like, any number of episodes was fantastic.”

“It was like, how could this be better?”

As Kelly started to get more time on-screen and Kaling balanced acting and writing, she developed a deep love for her job.

“I was such a fan of the show. I watched almost every cut of every episode, and then I would watch it live too. I didn’t realize how unusual that is for someone who works on a show,” Kaling said. “A lot of actors don’t even watch it when it airs, but I really was such a huge fan of the show. A lot of times in those conference room scenes I’d have no lines or like one line or something in these four-page scenes, and to me it was like going to Second City and watching everyone be so funny [for] free. You’d be in this freezing cold room, and there were snacks every two hours, and it was like, ‘How could this be better?”

Be sure to listen to the full recap of “Diwali” to hear more about Kaling’s time on the show, hear from Jaysha Patel (Kelly’s sister,) and learn about a steamy Karen and Jim scene that got completely cut from the episode.

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