Mindy Kaling: 'I Don't Need Marriage'
Mindy Kaling may play the boy-crazy -- and super-fashionable -- Mindy Lahiri on Fox's The Mindy Project, but in real-life, she's entirely happy being on her own.
In a new cover interview with Good Housekeeping, the 35-year-old writer/actress gets candid on her thoughts on romance and marriage.
"When I was younger, I wanted so badly to be married and have kids in a rush," she admits. "I loved my parents' relationship. The way my father was with my mother when she was dying was so moving. It was such devotion. I don't know that that will happen for me, but I like it."
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"I don't need marriage," she clarifies. "I don't need anyone to take care of all my needs and desires. I can take care of them myself now."
That's not to say she isn't into being romanced.
Mindy, who says she's "dating" right now, is very much into the rituals of courtship.
"If I could relive the first three months of courtship over and over for the rest of my life, I would," she says. "Especially in winter, who doesn't like a nice heavy seven-course meal with lots of alcohol, then making out when you're a little tipsy and taking a cab home to fall asleep in the clothes you wore on the date? Wait. Actually that was, like, my whole 20s. And it was very fun."
It's no secret that many Office fans would love to see Mindy eventually end up with her ex-boyfriend and former co-star B.J. Novak, who she admitted she would have married in a September interview with Howard Stern.
"I'm definitely not in the friends-with-my-exes camp," she says about her longtime pal. "But B.J. has the stamp for life as a friend. My mom loved him. He feels like family."
She actually refers to her mother, who passed away in 2012 at age 65 due to pancreatic cancer, as her "soul mate." Mindy was extremely close to her mom, an OB/GYN, who partly inspired her TV alter ego Dr. Lahiri.
"We all thought we would have a couple of years with her. Eight months later, she was gone. So fast," Mindy says about the shattering diagnosis.
However, she does believe that her mother is still watching over her. The very day she passed away, The Mindy Project was picked up by Fox. "I'm not superstitious, but I think my mom had some part in it," she recalls.
As for the constant chatter about her weight -- for the record, Mindy refers to her size as a "chubby 8" -- it surprisingly doesn't bother her all that much.
"I'm not an enormous person. I don't think of myself as overweight," she says. "I definitely get hurt when people say mean things about my body. But it's not the most important thing in my life."
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ET caught up with Mindy in November at Glamour's Women Of The Year Awards, when she dished about working with one of her idols, TV producer/writer Shonda Rhimes.
Watch below: