Mindy Kaling says late-night hosts are like monarchs, recalls turning down her "dream" job at SNL to stay at The Office

The Daily Beast

In an interview with The Last Laugh podcast, Kaling discussed her Late Night movie, why she no longer thinks comedy is a meritocracy, the lack of diversity in late-night and the time she rejected Saturday Night Live. When asked about the lack of diversity in late-night, Kaling said: "For the late-night TV hosts, you’re like a monarch. You have the show until you die. It’s a lifetime appointment. You’re like a Supreme Court justice. That’s what it’s like unless you really fuck it up. So there hasn’t been the opportunity." She adds that when one of the major current network late-night hosts retire, "I am 100 percent sure the person who replaces them will be a woman. And even more likely a person of color.” Kaling also discussed her experienced auditioning for SNL halfway through Season 2 of The Office. Kaling said she made a deal with showrunner Greg Daniels that if she was cast as a performer, she would be let out of her contract. But SNL instead offered a writer job with a hint that she could graduate to performer, like Jason Sudeikis. "So I went back and talked to Greg about it and he said to me, no, that’s not the deal we mad," she said. "The deal we made is that if you get cast as a cast member you can go. And it was really a life-changing thing. I think the course of my career would have gone really differently had I left The Office and done that instead.”