Mindy Kaling was 'jealous' for not being in Hollywood's 'comedy clique'

Mindy Kaling appeared on an episode of Armchair Expert alongside director Dax Shepard where she discussed the projects she worked on during and after her job on The Office.

"I was never part of a comedy clique,” she began.

"I was really jealous and I had a chip on my shoulder about it. Because in that aughts time [the early 2000s], you were in a clique or you weren't. I was on The Office, so maybe people were like, 'Well, she's there,' and maybe you could argue that that was a clique," Kaling continued, “But the writing stuff was very competitive with each other. We all had our own private ambitions, our own stuff we wanted to do. We wanted to write the best scripts, kill the table read, have Steve Carell think we were the funniest writer."

The actress added, "I was jealous of Judd [Apatow] and Seth [Rogen] and Jason [Segel] and then there was Amy [Poehler] and Tina [Fey], and Will [Ferrell] doing the ice-skating movie ... I felt like the entire aughts was me coming up on a show that I loved but being like, 'Why can't I be in a clique?'”

However, being on the outside ultimately helped her out, "It really fueled me in a good and bad way, where I was like, 'I don't have Lorne [Michaels], I don't have Judd. I don't have any of these people who are going to do something for me. I gotta do it myself. I'm gonna show them all.'”

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