Mindy Kaling Opens Up About Losing Her Mom To Cancer

By Amelia McDonell-Parry

Sept. 16, 2012

PHOTO: Mindy Kaling arrives at the FOX Fall Eco-Casino party at The Bookbindery on Sept. 10, 2012 in Culver City, Cali.

Mindy Kaling arrives at the FOX Fall Eco-Casino party at The Bookbindery on Sept. 10, 2012 in Culver City, Cali. (Gregg DeGuire/WireImage/Getty Images)

"My relationship with my mom is really the single most profound relationship that I've ever had in my life," she tells me. "By the way, it seems like I'm … I'm just blowing my nose. It's not because I'm sad." She has allergies and a cold, she promises. But her voice breaks when she starts talking about how she sat down with a pen and paper and asked her mother to give her all the advice she could possibly give her before she died, and Kaling realized she'd never be able to ask her mother for advice again. "I said to her, 'Mom, I'm going to be so lonely without you.'" She's crying now but keeps going. "And she just said, 'You have to be your own best friend. If you always remember that, you will always have someone there with you.'"

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Gregg DeGuire/WireImage/Getty Images

Mindy Kaling arrives at the FOX Fall... View Full Size

Gregg DeGuire/WireImage/Getty Images

Mindy Kaling arrives at the FOX Fall Eco-Casino party at The Bookbindery on Sept. 10, 2012 in Culver City, Cali.

-- I had no idea that writer/actress Mindy Kaling lost her mother to cancer in the last year, a year that happens to have been one of the most exciting for her career, with her debut memoir becoming a best seller and her pilot being picked up by Fox. Mindy's entire interview with New York is fantastic, both funny and moving, and it's quotes like these that make me excited for her new show, "The Mindy Project" (despite initial reports of squicky jokes about race). Her sense of humor always seems to come from a good place, with a lightness to it that still has a lot of depth, and I suspect much of that is due to the parents who raised her. I suspect her mother, wherever she is, is very proud. [ NYMag.com]

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