Mindy Kaling chatted with Entertainment Tonight recently to discuss her work as ambassador to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN). Her mother passed away several years ago following a battle with pancreatic cancer, and Mindy is promoting the PanCAN PurpleStride, a walking fundraiser which will happen in multiple cities on April 30. During her chat with ET, she talked about fitness and what it was like giving birth to her son during the pandemic:

She felt no pressure after having her son: “I had my son in the first year of the pandemic in September 2020… It was this almost extended maternity leave. I wasn’t going to be on camera, the studios were shut down. After I had my daughter I had to shoot a movie like two months later, so I was very much like, ‘Just give me grilled salmon and sautéed spinach. I’m going to eat that for three months.'”

She doesn’t like diets: “When the world started coming back a little bit I thought, ‘This kind of eating what appears, not taking any consideration for what I’m eating is probably not the way to go.’ Honestly, I didn’t really do anything differently. I eat what I like to eat. If I do any kind of restrictive diet, it never really works for me. I just eat less of it… I wish there was something more juicy or dynamic about the way that I’ve lost a little bit of weight, but that’s the way I’ve done it.”

Her kids had never really seen her dressed up before this year’s awards season: “[My kids] normally think of their mom and, ‘Oh the slob that writes on her computer all day.’ But when I had to get ready for all of these events, [to] my daughter I was like Elsa from Frozen. I became completely transformed and she treated me completely differently. She was in awe. That’s really funny. I think, because of the pandemic, I hadn’t been getting dressed up as much. That was kind of fun, to wow her now and again. She is just at that age where that stuff is kind of interesting.”

Her daughter asks her about death: “She’s 4 and she’s already asking me about death. It’s something that I was not prepared to answer, frankly. We were reading Charlotte’s Web and she was asking me about what happened to grandma,” Kaling said of her mom, Swati Roysircar, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2012. “It came up I was completely caught off guard, ’cause I thought she’s far too young to be talking about it. My rule of thumb with my kids is I answer their questions completely honestly. I said, ‘Your grandmother passed away pretty young and pretty surprisingly to a disease called pancreatic cancer. Mom’s trying to work to help fight it, so there’s more survivors.'”

[From ET]

I actually wish Mindy was on-camera more often, because I think she’s a deft comedienne and, for me, that kind of Desi visibility is always welcome. That being said, I’m still so impressed with the way she transitioned from starring/producing/writing The Mindy Project to show-running and developing projects like Never Have I Ever, The Sex Lives of College Girls and other shows and scripts. As for her diet and stuff… yeah, I can never stick to a diet either. Restrictive diets just leave me cold. It’s still kind of bonkers that she just quietly had two kids and now she just raises them and writes and produces and minds her business. No one does that!

These are photos of Mindy at the Vanity Fair Oscar party. I understand why Katherine thought she looked like Elsa! And yes, BJ Novak was her date. Ugh.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.