Mindy Kaling’s rise now includes her life as an Indian-American teen growing up in America

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Photo that Mindy Kaling tweeted on her site March 19, saying, “My friend Julia Powell found this pic of me from high school! I think we were rehearsing the musical Rags, where I played a rag picker. What a time.” (Photo: Kaling Twitter @mindykaling)

For 2019, Mindy Kaling has already chalked up a string of successes and big-time contracts worth millions of dollars, to put her possibly in the shortlist of the highest earning Indian-American Hollywood personalities.

After a $13 million sale of her movie “Late Night” to Amazon at the Sundance Film Festival, followed by an exclusive, multi-year overall deal with Warner Bros. Television Group to develop, write and produce new television project for all platforms, she has another feather in her cap with a Netflix partnership to make a ten-episode series about growing up Indian-American in the United States of America.

Using several emojis to convey her feelings, Kaling tweeted March 20, “I’m joining the @netflix fam! @loulielang and I are working on a brand-new @netflix TV comedy about the life of a modern-day first generation Indian American teenage girl. Get ready for lots of relatable, awkward teen moments. More coming soon”

“Netflix has ordered a new coming-of-age comedy series from Mindy Kaling about the complicated life of a modern-day first generation Indian American teenage girl, inspired by Kaling’s own childhood,” Netflix announced March 20 in a press release.

The funny girl, born Vera Mindy Chokalingam, who has secured some serious business deals, is a role model to many Indian-Americans and her shenanigans as a writer and actor in other television series including  The Office, through The Mindy Project, and beyond, are beloved by Indian-Americans.

The Netflix announcement said Lang Fisher, who worked with Kaling in The Mindy Project, and on Brooklyn Nine Nine, will be serving as co-creator and showrunner alongside Kaling.

The executive producers of this new series are Howard Klein, who also worked on The Office, as well as in The Mindy Project, and Parks and Recreation, as well as David Miner of 30 Rock, and Aziz Ansari’s Master of Nine.

Kaling’s journey from behind the scenes to a formidable cultural onscreen phenomenon, is relatively unusual in the Indian-American community which however has seen a massive rise of first generation youth making their mark in the entertainment scene, including writer, comedian, actor and film-maker Aziz Ansari, comedian Hasan Minhaj, and of course, Kunal Nayar of Big Bang Theory, to name just a few.

Kaling’s coming-of-age 10-part series is yet to get a name, but her mostly un-erring knack for script-writing promises to make it enjoyable.

Kaling got her first break as a staff-writer for The Office, over time becoming the executive producer. According to imdb.com, Kaling was the first female member of The Office writing staff in 2005, when she was 24, a series where she also acted as Kelly Kapoor.

With The Mindy Project, Kaling made her mark by breaking stereotypes about Indians, both in the story-line and script, but sticking to the widely acknowledged association of Indian-Americans with the doctor  persona. The Mindy Project ran for 3 seasons on Netflix and another 3 on Hulu.

She has acted in other Hollywood film productions – Oceans 8, a heist comedy, and A Wrinkle In Time, a science fiction adaptation of a popular children’s book, both in 2018.

Kaling has also written two books – “Why Not Me?” and “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?And Other Concerns.”

 

 

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