Speaker
Amy Poehler
Appearances over time
6 episodes
Episodes
6Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Mindy Kaling wrote more episodes of The Office than any other writer — a remarkable achievement for someone who started as the room's only woman and only person of color.
Sarah Sherman has just completed her fifth season as a cast member on Saturday Night Live.
Roughly 1,500 people auditioned for the role of Spider-Man that Tom Holland ultimately won.
Amy Poehler noted a TikTok trend comparing Gen X and Gen Z dancing styles, with Gen X clearing the dance floor in full-body moves while Gen Z barely moves.
Hilton has over 9,000 hotels around the world, including resorts and all-inclusive options.
About 1 in 10 people who develop meningococcal disease will die from it.
Both Colman Domingo and Amy Poehler are Enneagram Type 8s (the Challenger), a personality type that is highly motivated by challenges — Domingo discovered this when Tina Fey made him take the test on the set of The Four Seasons.
Mindy's mom sat her down at 14 and warned her not to be like Chris Farley. But Mindy's reflection cuts deeper: she says she'd have been lucky to be Chris Farley. Being a heavy, funny woman in the mid-'90s meant you had no roadmap — just closed doors.
Watching Mindy Kaling get made into a major television star wasn't just inspiring — it was proof that 'people like me are deserving of being put on a big platform.' Avantika describes auditioning for Never Have I Ever, memorizing the sign-in sheet, and wanting to befriend every girl in the waiting room.
When Avantika DM'd Mindy at 17 with a fangirl message, Mindy didn't just reply — she took her to a French restaurant in an LA strip-mall and ordered escargot. Over snails, Mindy asked: 'What do you want in life?' That question set the tone for their entire relationship.
For eight years, Steve Carell was #1 on The Office call sheet and Kelly Kapoor was #11. That hierarchy wasn't unfair — it was just the truth. But after eight years, Mindy had to find out what it felt like to be the one powering a show from 7am to wrap. So she built her own.
At the Cannes press junket for Inside Out, Amy and Mindy were asked, more or less directly, why a fat smiling woman should be a star and whether Mindy was really a Hufflepuff pretending to be a Gryffindor. Mindy's response: unlike Javier Bardem, she just laughed and sat there.
Mindy's trilogy has one DNA strand: ambitious, horny underdogs who feel they lack access to the life they want. That's Never Have I Ever, Sex Lives of College Girls, and Not Suitable for Work in one sentence. It's also, in many ways, Mindy's autobiography.
The Mindy Project was set in an OB-GYN practice because Mindy's mother was one — she barely had to research anything. Her mother spent every day with women sharing their most intimate secrets. That intimacy became the DNA of the show's world, even as the character couldn't be more different from her mom.
Mindy wants to write and direct movies, be genuinely present for her three kids, and maybe one day walk into a Dartmouth lecture hall in a beautiful sweater with 150 students staring at her. Oh, and she's ready for the day when TV shows just need 'that decrepit grand dame' for a couple of lines.
Mindy doesn't do TikTok — she's afraid she'd be too into it. What she does do: The Curse with Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone ('really strange'), Abbott Elementary, Hacks, The Pit, and most dramas. Also: she thinks Nathan Fielder is a genuine millennial heartthrob, and she's happy for him.
Mindy got on camera completely by accident: Greg Daniels needed someone Indian in the room for the Diversity Day episode so Michael Scott would actually be offending people. Being a writer who happened to be Indian landed her a role — and then an entirely different career.
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.
Greta Lee was the hostess at David Chang's Momofuku and was 'basically encouraged to be mean.' Telling walk-ins they'd wait four hours wasn't a time estimate — it was a polite way of saying the table was never coming.
Performing a drowning scene means actually choking, actually swallowing water, and actually suffering — and the better you are at it, the more you'll be hired to do it again. Greta Lee's rule: don't be good at things you don't want to do.
The hardest part of Past Lives wasn't speaking Korean on camera or carrying the film — it was learning to sit in silence without making a joke. Greta Lee's survival mechanism is improvising. Céline Song needed her to stop.
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.
Analysis
What they talk about
- Society & Culture 50%
- Business 13%
- Comedy 13%
- Education 12%
- TV & Film 12%
Connections
Shows they appear on and people they share episodes with. Drag to explore.
