The Gonz Show: Mindy Kaling

The Office is full of locals, including the Cambridge native who plays Kelly. And there may even be a job opening for John Gonzalez.

By John Gonzalez

So, Mindy isn’t your real name. I would go by my real one, Vera, if it wasn’t also the name of, like, an 85-year-old Russian woman. But my parents were living in Nigeria when my mom was pregnant with me, and the only American TV show they could get was Mork & Mindy. So I got the nickname Mindy.

It’s lucky they weren’t Starsky & Hutch fans. Yeah, I could have been named Cheech. But my mother also calls me Hunty Bunty.

Have you Googled yourself? Oh, yeah. I’m Googling myself right now. Like, I’m not even paying attention to what you’re saying.

That’s fantastic—me neither. According to Google, you’re the second most famous Mindy in the world. The first is Mindy Main, a porn star. I’ve never been jealous of a porn star until now. That’s excruciating.

I was at work and didn’t want to get fired for Internet porn, so I didn’t check her out. She better have the biggest, fakest boobs and the awesomest body, or else I’m gonna be so mad.

A lot of The Office cast members are from Boston. There’s you, Steve Carell, B. J. Novak, John Krasinski. Is the lighting guy from here, too? Our writing staff, about half are Lampoon guys. So there’s tons of Yankee-hating. We’ll get lunch from whatever crappy place NBC is making us eat from, and we’ll be like, “I wish we had Bartley’s burgers right now.”

You know, I live in Boston, too. Maybe if you have an opening for a fifth guy in the background... It would be so close to happening. Basically, our boss doesn’t like to sit through auditions. He just points at the writers and says, “Be in the show.”

You were in License to Wed with Krasinski, and The 40-Year-Old Virgin with Carell. The cronyism you guys have is awesome. You’re like the Bush administration. Yes. Thank you.

All you have to do now is go to war with 30 Rock under false pretenses.

Originally published in Boston magazine, September 2007