Mindy Kaling felt "pressure" to represent her entire race because of the lack of representation in the movie industry.
Mindy Kaling
The 'Mindy Project' star says white men are not faced with the prejudice, where they are representing their whole gender or whole race on set and she admits that added to the nerves.
She said: "A lot of times when you come into a room and you're the only person of colour or only woman if you're working with a lot of white guys and they say something dumb or have a bad day it's not like you think, 'Well, all white men must be like this,' because you have a sense of context. But when I was a writer there if I had a bad day or said something lame or unfunny, 'Oh this is what they think Indian women are like.' Not only are you trying to make it on a show and be funny and get asked back. But you also have the mantle of all Asian women or Indian women or just women, are this way. If I have a bad day it doesn't feel so good to be a representative."
And the 40-year-old actress, comedienne and writer loved when shows were challenged to post a photo of their writing team as it left some showrunners "terrified", and Mindy feels terror isn't a "bad thing".
In a conversation with actress Constance Wu for Variety's Actors on Actors segment, she said: "I think it got a lot of people really scared. I was so happy for my two shows, 'Great let's take a photo' because you feel so proud of how diverse your staff is.
"I think those types of things that terrify certain showrunners is great. Sometimes terror is not a bad thing."
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