You don’t know how excited I am to see Mindy Kaling get some love from Elle Magazine! Elle’s February issue is “Women In Television” and they’ve done four covers featuring Mindy, Zooey Deschanel, Amy Poehler and Allison Williams. If we’re going just by looks… Zooey’s cover is the odd woman out. Zooey’s cover just looks bad all around. Amy’s cover is the one that makes me smile the most, because I love that she’s not doing an open-mouthed, constipated SexyFace. Allison’s cover made me eye-roll because I hate the fact that she’s “the pretty one” of Girls and I hate that she WANTS to be known as that. And Mindy? Well, I don’t understand her grumpy expression, but her hair looks amazing.

You can see Elle’s slideshow here, and here are some assorted quotes from all of the profiles:

Zooey on how growing up in Hollywood affected her:
“Definitely none of the kids I grew up with would have ever thought, Zooey will be on television and have her own show. I wasn’t the world’s most popular child, which gave me built-in tenacity. Nothing has ever come easy for me, and I think that’s a really good thing. I learned at an early age that you have to work hard for what you get.”

Zooey on “girliness” connoting weakness:
“There has been a shift. I really have stood up for myself on multiple platforms. It’s sort of the grown-up version of middle-school nastiness, and I’m just like, come on. If there’s one thing I’d like to graduate from, it’s girl-on-girl hate. I don’t believe in it.”

BJ Novak on his ex-girlfriend/current collaborator/best friend, Mindy Kaling:
“She’s a gangster and guys respond to that. This is not a girl who waits by the phone. This is a girl who picks up the phone and calls whoever she wants.”

Mindy on how the The Mindy Project getting green-lit served as a desperately needed distraction from her mother’s death:
“Any person that’s been in the business knows they’re so lucky to have their show picked up–it happens to such a small fraction of shows. But I was lucky personally, because I needed a distraction so badly from my grief. Still my thoughts flutter toward her in scenes that I’m doing, every night before I go to bed, and every morning when I wake up.”

Amy Poehler on the conflict between being a comedian and being a grown-up:
“Now that I have kids, I’m up at 5:30AM no matter what. Sleep at this point is just a concept, something I’m looking forward to investigating in the future. But I’d like to say that I maintain that same sense of play and creativity and spontaneity–of being able to get into a room with people and say, ‘Let’s waste some time.’ When you’re a creative person, even when you’re in a position of power, you still have to be able to straddle both worlds.”

Amy Poheler on why she’s heading into directing, production and writing:
“I like to do things that challenge me and make me nervous. You learn early as an actor that creating your own material is the only way to have any control. Hollywood is like a bad boyfriend. You can’t stand around and wait to be asked to dance.”

Allison Williams on why she tends to wear high-end, American designers on the red carpet:
“I wanted to establish a baseline: Here’s what I look like, I have long brown hair, I wear this kind of dress, this is the deal. You can count on it! Look at Jennifer Aniston: she’s America’s sweetheart for a reason. You know what she’s going to look like when she shows up to something, and there’s something so comfortable in that.”

Allison Williams on where she wants her career to go:
“I want to play a villain. I want to play a romantic heroine. I want to play someone who’s on heroin. There’s nothing I don’t want to do. I want to play a guy at some point. I’ll gain 100 pounds, I’ll cut my hair off, I’ll do whatever. I’m not precious about any of it.”

[From Elle]

One of these things is not like the other. Mindy, Amy and Zooey get to talk about real things, their creativity, their grief, their issues with bullying… and then Allison bops in and says some words about how she approaches her style. Ugh. Anyway, I love what BJ Novak has to say about Mindy and I wish more people would come back to The Mindy Project this season. It’s gotten really, really good. And New Girl sucks hard this season.

Photos courtesy of Elle.