2023 does not seem to start on a cheerful note for actor, writer, and producer Mindy Kaling. As if massive criticism for her latest HBO Max show Velma was not enough to rob her of her sleep, she is now being called out for her comments in an old video that has resurfaced online.
In the video, the 43-year-old is seen joking about kissing a co-star without their consent. The old video clip is from an interview she appeared in 2016 with Conan O’Brien on his popular late-night show Conan.
During the show, host O’Brien asked Kaling, “Do you ever feel like having that much power on your show has led to you being unprofessional? Because power can corrupt.”
Responding to his question, Kaling said, “I think the temptation is there and I have succumbed to that temptation. We’ve had a lot of handsome actors on the show and I am a professional, I can be around handsome guys and I can behave like a lady.”
She then recalled an incident when actor Lee Pace appeared as Alexander Eakin in a Season 3 episode of her show The Mindy Project as someone her character had lost her virginity to in college.
“We were just supposed to be having a conversation,” she said. “But he was so tall and he was so handsome that in the middle of that, he was just supposed to be like, ‘What do you think, Mindy?’ and I was like—”
Kaling mimed kissing Pace and went on to add, “I improvised just kissing him in the scene, which was not in the script. He was looming above me and he asked me a question and I was not listening to him at all, because who cares what he was saying? I was like mhm, mhm, mwah.”
Kaling admitted that the entire incident shocked Pace to no end and when she walked backstage, two writers told her she could be sued for that unscripted kiss.
“And I got very scared. Then I said: ‘Tell anyone and you’re fired,’” Kaling added.
While no one raised their eyebrows when Kaling first admitted to kissing Pace in 2016, people are now calling her out for her indecent act.
Sharing the Conan interview in a TikTok video, one user said, “Oh that’s gross. It’s not funny, it’s not cheeky. No, that’s really gross. Like, you said ‘tell anyone, you’re fired’ because you sexually assaulted somebody.”
“He’s at work, you’re at work,” the TikToker then repeated. “What are you doing? There are people if you want to kiss him, if you thought it would benefit the scene, there are intimacy coordinators available!”
Another person said, “This is so insane that she literally told it on TV like she doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with it.”
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