Where this was said
Matt and Ben: The Play That Changed Everything
At 27:40 · chapter starts 25:55
The Matt and Ben story is one of the episode's highlights — a tale of desperation, creative invention, and total disregard for what anyone else thought. Mindy was babysitting. Her friend Brenda was substitute teaching. Both had been rejected from proper entertainment jobs. They started improvising Ben Affleck and Matt Damon characters for fun, and then realized they could make it into something. All their friends thought it was stupid. They wrote a play about competition between creative friends who also deeply love each other — a theme Mindy says has obsessed her for decades — and submitted it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It won. It moved Off-Broadway. Celebrities came. Mindy got hired on The Office. She reflects that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have been gracious about the whole thing — which is more than she would be if anyone did a play about her.
Mindy and her friend Brenda were babysitting and substitute teaching when they started doing Ben Affleck and Matt Damon impressions for fun. Nobody thought it was serious. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival did. The play won, moved Off-Broadway, attracted celebrities — and landed Mindy The Office.
Mindy Kaling and her friend wrote the play Matt and Ben in their early 20s while working low-level jobs post-9/11 in New York — the play eventually won the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Matt and Ben won the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, transferred Off-Broadway, and became the unlikely launchpad that landed Mindy Kaling her job on The Office.
Mindy walked into The Office writers' room as the only woman and the only person of color, surrounded by writers who already had Emmys. She didn't feel triumphant — she felt behind. Her survival strategy: become a workaholic and get dazzled by the talent around her.
