THE MINDY PROJECT at PaleyFest: The Cast and Producers on the Decision to Pair Danny and Mindy, and What Comes Next
March 26, 2014 by Marisa Roffman
Filed under #1 featured, The Mindy Project
THE MINDY PROJECT has been off the air since January, and one of the things that has kept fans buzzing in that time was Danny and Mindy’s episode-ending kiss. But while some viewers may have been waiting for that moment for much (or all) of the show’s run, the people behind the series weren’t initially sure they’d go down that road with those characters.
“As writers, we can write dialogues and arcs to the story, but we can’t write chemistry,” THE MINDY PROJECT creator/star Mindy Kaling (Mindy) pointed out during Tuesday night’s PaleyFest panel honoring the series. “And for the longest time…we thought it could be like 30 ROCK, where Jack Donaghy and Liz Lemon [were] just colleagues. And then we had other people saying it was inevitable [Danny and Mindy got together]. You can’t script chemistry. You can’t script that whenever we cross the street [Chris Messina (Danny)] touches my back. After a while, it became not ‘if’ they kiss, but ‘when.'”
The potential coupling of Mindy and Danny has drawn comparisons to Kaling’s former series, THE OFFICE, where co-workers/friends Jim and Pam has their own slow build to a relationship, but Kaling isn’t as sold on that analogy.
