Kelly Kapoor and Mindy Lahiri were two of the most romance-obsessed characters of the past two decades of television. But in her offscreen life, Mindy Kaling, a single mother of two, isn’t bothered by her lack of a partner. In fact, she is so unbothered she’d like people to stop offering to set her up. ASAP.
“When you’re a certain age and you’re a single woman, and if you go to a party, it bums people out,” Kaling said, speaking to Meghan Markle on the latter’s Archetypes Spotify podcast. “Even your existence as a single woman in a party where it’s married people, or just a regular party with single guys or something, you get this feeling that you’re like, Oh, I’m changing the vibe here, because everyone’s worried about me or sad for me.” As a fellow single person, I can relate.
And that pity, Kaling said, can lead to well-intentioned but unwelcome offers of companionship. “They want to set me up with some loser they know,” she continued. “And I’m like, ‘I’m okay. I’m a rich, successful woman with great clothes and a nice family.’” But according to the showrunner-writer-actress, even her immense success doesn’t dissuade people from thinking she needs a man to be happy. “‘Oh, you doth protest too much. There’s no happiness greater than lying in the bed with a man who loves you,’” she said, mimicking the attitude from others. (My hot take: Maybe wait until someone asks to be set up before you try it.)
Kaling appeared on Archetypes to discuss the word singleton and spoke about how she manages being a single mother to her 5-year-old daughter, Kit, and 2-year-old son, Spencer. (Contrary to popular belief, B.J. Novak is their godfather, not their biological father … we think.) Noting that she had a live-in nanny and that her father and stepmother were picking her daughter up from camp on the day of the recording, she admitted that it’s a privilege to be able to raise kids on her own while being successful in her work. “I have my community that allows me to have that decision,” she said. “I waited until I was in my late 30s to have children because I knew I needed the resources to be able to do it comfortably. And not everyone has that.”