For all of The Office‘s flaws and imperfections, we could always rely on some guaranteed gems from Mindy Kaling, who did double duty on the show as a writer and as Kelly Kapoor for several seasons.
However, had the universe played out a bit differently – and had the showrunner for The Office, Greg Daniels, been a bit more flexible – we would’ve had a lot less of Kelly Kapoor but we would’ve had a new favourite Saturday Night Live cast member.
Appearing on The Last Laugh podcast, Mindy revealed that she was invited to audition for SNL partway through season two of The Office, which was around 2006.
Now most people would be stoked to be on a show like The Office but being on SNL was a “childhood dream” of Mindy’s so she asked Daniels if she could have a good crack at getting on the popular variety show. Daniels was pretty cool about it and agreed to let Mindy out of her Office contract if she got cast as a performer on SNL.
Here’s where it goes a little pear-shaped. Mindy was offered a writer position on SNL but not as a performer, though there was a possibility to eventually be promoted to the cast if she stayed long enough.
However, Daniels didn’t let Mindy leave The Office for SNL because she didn’t get cast as a performer and that was their deal, so bye bye dream job.
What Daniels did was totally understandable – who would want to let someone as talented as Mindy leave their show? – but this would’ve been huge for both Mindy and comedy fans.
Can you imagine how great it would’ve been to see Mindy’s comedic and writing talents on full display on SNL? She may well have broken out of the SNL ranks like Andy Samberg, Kristen Wiig, and Kate McKinnon and gone on to do great things.
Things all worked out in the end though as Mindy finished her run on The Office, got to make her own TV show, appeared in several well-received movies (one of which involved starring alongside the great Emma Thompson), and even got to guest-write on SNL.
But still, we’re now left wondering what could’ve been had Kelly Kapoor left Dunder Mifflin earlier than expected, took Ryan Howard with her, and moved to New York to make us laugh every Saturday night. It probably would’ve been glorious.