Mindy Kaling's Real Name: Vera Mindy Chokalingam

Quick answer: Mindy Kaling's documented original name is Vera Mindy Chokalingam. Encyclopaedia Britannica lists that form as also known as and dates her birth to June 24, 1979, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Variety independently uses Vera Chokalingam in a 2009 profile (Britannica; Variety).

Real name and early life

She is known professionally as Mindy Kaling. Britannica says she is the daughter of Indian immigrants—an architect father and an obstetrician-gynecologist mother—who met while working at a hospital in Nigeria and moved to the United States in 1979. As a child, Britannica says, she paid close attention to sketch comedies including In Living Color and Saturday Night Live. She attended Dartmouth College, earning a B.A. in 2001 after majoring in theater; Britannica says she sang with the all-female a cappella group Rockapellas, performed with the campus improv troupe the Dog Day Players, and drew a comic, Badly Drawn Girl, for the college paper. Variety also notes improvisational comedy at Dartmouth.

Career highlights

After graduation, Britannica says, she and her college friend Brenda Withers developed Matt & Ben, a satirical play in which the women portrayed Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. The piece won best overall production at the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival and later had an Off-Broadway run. Variety dates the breakthrough to 2003 and confirms the collaboration with Withers. Writer-producer Greg Daniels then hired Kaling to write for the American version of The Office; she also played Kelly Kapoor throughout the series' 2005–13 run, became an executive producer in 2008, and directed episodes, Britannica records.

She later created, wrote, produced, and starred in The Mindy Project (2012–17), which moved to Hulu for its fourth season. Britannica also lists later series work including Champions (2018), Never Have I Ever, and The Sex Lives of College Girls, as well as the film Late Night (2019) and a role in Ocean's 8 (2018). She has published the essay collections Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (and Other Concerns) (2011) and Why Not Me? (2015). Britannica adds that as a producer of the Broadway musical A Strange Loop she won a Tony Award in 2022, when the show was named best musical.

Name notes for searchers

Vera Mindy Chokalingam is the documented original name in Britannica; Variety uses Vera Chokalingam. The professional name is Mindy Kaling. Searchers looking for Kelly Kapoor on The Office or the creator of The Mindy Project are usually aiming at the same person.