‘The Office couldn’t be made today’: Mindy Kaling

The writer and actor says the NBC sitcom is 'so inappropriate' and that 'most of the characters would be canceled by now.'

The writer and actor says the NBC sitcom is "so inappropriate" and that "most of the characters would be canceled by now."

The Office writer and actor Mindy Kaling says that the landmark NBC sitcom is “so inappropriate” that it “just couldn’t be made today.”

Kaling, who played Kelly Kapoor in the NBC sitcom, told Good Morning America that she and her fellow writers have discussed that the series “probably” wouldn’t fly in today's climate.

“That show is so inappropriate now,” Kaling said. “The writers who I’m still in touch with now, we always talk about how so much of that show we probably couldn’t make now.

“Tastes have changed, and honestly what offends people has changed so much now.”

Kaling added that she thinks that one of the reasons the show has endured in popularity is “because people feel like there’s something kind of fearless about it or taboo that it talks about on the show.”

The Office.

When asked what she thinks her character would be doing in a hypothetical 2022 iteration of the show, Kaling said that her character would “probably be cancelled.”

“I think she would have quit Dunder Mifflin to become an influencer, and then probably be canceled, almost immediately. 

“Actually, most of the characters on that show would be canceled by now.”

The Office, a spinoff of the Ricky Gervais-penned British comedy of the same name, premiered in NBC in 2005. Despite the final season airing in 2013, the show is one of the highest-streamed series of all time. In 2020, during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, it was the most streamed series on Netflix, clocking over 57 billion minutes. 

Steve Carell in The Office.

With seemingly every popular tv show being revived, the cast of The Office is frequently asked whether it will return in some capacity. Actor Steve Carrell has previously expressed that he will never appear in a reboot. 

“I’ll tell you, no,” Carell told Collider in 2018. “The show is way more popular now than when it was on the air. I just can’t see it being the same thing, and I think most folks would want it to be the same thing, but it wouldn’t be.

"Ultimately, I think it’s maybe best to leave well enough alone and just let it exist as what it was.”