Mindy Kaling grateful to Hulu for saving "The Mindy Project"
Mindy Kaling is blissfully unaware of the numbers Hulu may be hoping for when it comes to streaming new episodes of "The Mindy Project," which debuts its fourth season on the service on Sept. 15.
"To be honest, after being on network TV for 11 years, I'm kind of happy about that. I'd rather just focus on the creative and I'm happy that they're not trying to pull me into those conversations," Kaling, its creator and star, told The Associated Press Sunday.
Fox canceled the series in May but Hulu revived it days later, asking for 26 episodes, which is the biggest season order of "The Mindy Project" to date.
"I'm so grateful and I just want to make the show better than it's ever been," said Kaling. "We went from 'We're never doing this show again' to having more work than ever."
The comedy itself won't change too much in its leap to the web where a new episode will be posted each week.
"I think if we really changed the show and made it more risqué and put it more on a tilt towards stuff you might find on HBO or Showtime, we would maybe turn off some of our core viewers," said Ike Barinholtz, who is a cast member, producer and writer on the series.
The episodes won't be under the same time constraints that exist in network television, so they will feature more of the supporting cast like Ed Weeks, Beth Grant and Xosha Roquemore. Kaling said she is happy to give them more screen time because she was a supporting player on "The Office" who appreciated when she had more to do.
The 36-year-old entertainer also hasn't ruled out producing TV for other people and said she would consider it if she found something she was excited by.
For now, her main priority is to her show.
"Right now, I just want to make sure that I get ('The Mindy Project') right," she said. "I see so many people that I admire who do it and I've been approached to do it before. I don't want the people who've spent years of their life on this show to feel I've checked out by doing something else."