Mindy Kaling had a "reckoning" at age 25 after a TV writer made a "devastating" comment about her weight

Good Morning America

Kaling had just starting out on The Office when a co-worker in a different writers' room suggested a simple joke: that their character should tell hers she could lose 15 pounds. But to Kaling didn't find the joke funny. "This is my greatest insecurity and someone just called it out. It's really devastating," Kaling recalled to Good Morning America, noting that she was already waking up extra early to go to the gym before work. Pushing aside her hurt feelings, Kaling began to look inward. "I had a reckoning where I'm like, 'People are scrutinizing (me), and not only are they scrutinizing (me), they're verbalizing their displeasure with how I look because I don't look a certain way," she said. "That kind of dissonance has really affected so much of what I write about (and) the kind of characters I play. Almost all of those kinds of things (in my work) come from something really real."