“I’m super scared to do a network comedy because I’ve never done one before, so when she first asked, I told her no a bunch of times. But she kept coming back to me. At first, this guy was named Clayton Brooks, and he was much more uptight, and when I said no, she gave him a different name — Danny Castellano — and a different upbringing and a different personality, and it became impossible to say no. Danny is now more of a ball-buster. He’s jaded. He’s got a chip on his shoulder, but he’s fun, like Bruce Willis in Moonlighting or Han Solo in Star Wars.â€
- Chris Messina on telling Mindy Kaling that he wanted his Mindy Project character to be a real cool dude. No word yet on which character is like Chewbacca.