THE MINDY PROJECT at TCA: Live-Blog

THE MINDY PROJECT is making the move to Hulu this fall.

With the show debuting on Tuesday, September 15th, the cast and producers are participating in a panel for the Television Critics Association about the fourth season. Follow along for a live-blog…3:50 PM: “We always though it would be funny that an OB-GYN would have an accidental pregnancy,” Mindy Kaling says. They’ve been finding fun stories to tell with the pregnancy.

3:52 PM: “I had been to the Hulu Upfronts a few years ago,” Kaling says. She notes a lot of people she knows who watch the show via Hulu. She calls the switch a “smooth transition.”

Ike Barinholtz says they knew the transition from Fox was happening, and he got a few messages from family members with their regrets about the show ending, and he couldn’t say anything.

3:53 PM: “Full penetrative sex,” Barinholtz jokes of the change between airing on Fox to streaming on Hulu. But seriously, they don’t want to turn off their core viewers.

On Fox, they couldn’t say “Jesus” or “jeez” — now they can say things like that.

Kaling says they’ll be able to go back to the three-act structure with Hulu. And EP Matt Warburton says now that they don’t have to fill an exact amount of time to fill, they can let the ensemble play out a little more.

“They have promised me sex,” Beth Grant jokes.

3:56 PM: “The best romantic comedies are the ones with great characters,” Kaling says. She notes the best comedies are ones where you care about the characters versus just the plot of what people are doing. In an upcoming scene where Mindy gives birth, Kaling acknowledged it reminded her that if they’re good enough, you can have characters grow old together, etc., and still stay interesting.

3:58 PM: “It’s interesting that streaming isn’t just for indie projects,” Warburton says. He points out UNBREAKABLE KIMMY feels like a network show, and it works on Netflix. Barinholtz also points out they get less notes at Hulu, though he says Fox wasn’t huge on giving them notes, either.

4:00 PM: “I think ultimately, when I get very old, I’ll look back and think I learned something. It’s never been easy for me or the show,” Kaling says of the show’s multiple jumps in locations. But ultimately, “We always end up with people who love it.”

4:02 PM: “I’m used to people who do a lot of different things,” Kaling says of what she’s learned over the past few years. “I’ve learned a lot — not to hawk my book, but I write about it in my book.”

4:03 PM: “When you have a show that’s centered around one person, I feel we genuinely didn’t know what we’d enjoy exploring…a lot of the adjustments came on the fly,” Warburton says of the cast changes over the run of the series. “It has settled in with the office [crew].”

4:04 PM:  Fortune Feimster and Garret Dillahunt are guesting in MINDY PROJECT season 4. Also, Danny and Morgan will have an episode where they road trip.

“You end up drawing from a different well of movies,” Warburton says of introducing both sets of parents.

“I’d rather do that than have complete freedom,” Kaling says of things that were implied in “I Slipped.”

“Fox was like, ‘Under no circumstance can she talk to her ass,'” Barinholtz says of a cut line from the Fox run.

4:09 PM: “Mindy explores what it would have been like if she had never fallen in love with Danny and explored this relationship,” Kaling says of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. “But he’s not what Mindy thinks.”

“It was fun to use him as a character that’s an ideal, and then [reverse it],” Kaling says of the fun of using Gordon-Levitt.

Freida Pinto plays Danny’s girlfriend in the alternate universe, and she and Mindy have a hilarious scene together.

Barinholtz pitches us a joke Kaling cut and she jokes she’s so mad he shared it with us. (It was a funny Pintrest/Fritos joke.)

And Dillahunt will be playing Kaling’s “replacement” while Mindy is on maternity leave.

4:13 PM: Grant’s co-stars had no clue she used to work a bit in NBC publicity. She came to acting a little bit later in life, and knew she couldn’t not act any more.

4:15 PM: “I don’t love gorging on comedy,” Barinholtz says.

Warburton says they also love engaging with fans. He says if you binge, you get a lot of great content at once, but two weeks later, you’re basically out of content.

After Kaling hypothesizes that they could send Barinholtz to THE TONIGHT SHOW and then she backtracks on it, and Barinholtz, jokingly, calls Jimmy Fallon a dick. “Let’s not call Jimmy Fallon a dick,” Kaling retorts.

4:18 PM: “We always say Mindy can only change five percent at a time,” Kaling says. She says it might be cynical, but she believes people don’t change — her mindset is now that her child is the best thing ever, and it should be

4:20 PM: “It’s super dope,” Xosha Roquemore says of being a series regular. “I’ve seen some cool growth in Tamra.”

4:21 PM: Danny wants to get Mindy a push present, though he thinks the notion is “a scam perpetuated by ‘Big Bracelet,'” Kaling teases.

4:23 PM: “I love actors, I love being around them, and I consider myself a writerly actor,” Kaling says. “Certainly it’s very useful to have, I like that energy of having Ike on set…Chris’ trajectory is very different, Ed is a stand-up. I like it, but it’s not necessary… lately, the overlap has been so huge of people who have been writing and acting.”

4:24 PM: “Does anyone have any questions about me and my personal life?” Barinholtz asks us. When there’s silence, he cracks, “Thanks for respecting me and my privacy.”

4:25 PM: Grant takes a moment to praise Kaling: “When I came to this show, Mindy, to me, was what we women of the ’60s and ’70s dreamed about — this boss, in charge,” she says. She also notes Hulu is perfect for the show. “I’m honored to be on the show.”

“I’m such an ambitious person; I’m so grateful for Hulu for giving us this opportunity,” Kaling says. “I want to make the show better than it’s ever been…it went from being we’re never going to do this show again to doing more than we’ve ever done…it makes you really emotional.”