Actress, producer, and director Mindy Kaling was honored with the 2,800th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame earlier this year at 6533 Hollywood Boulevard. Kaling received her star in the category of Television. Joining emcee and Hollywood Chamber of Commerce President & CEO Steve Nissen was her The Office co-star and longtime friend, B.J. Novak, who gave her a touching but comical tribute.
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00:00Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the newest Walk of Famer to the Hollywood Walk of Fame,
00:22Bindi Kelly. I am so happy right now. It's such an uncomplicated happiness. It's a beautiful day in Hollywood with all my favorite people in the whole world, and I'm on a star on the Walk of Fame. I have no other feeling other than just I'm a little stunned, mostly just so happy.
00:48It is a special feeling to be here as we add the star of Mindy Kaling to the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
00:57Because in addition to being a brilliant and wildly successful showrunner, an incredible mother of three, a deep and caring daughter and friend and mentor to so many, Mindy is also in her spare time, I assure you, very superficial.
01:11She likes red carpet drama. She wants to know what really happened on the junket. She's actually kind of interested in who wore it better and has some opinions.
01:24She understands what fame means to people because she's a normal person and it means something to her. She knows it can be fun and interesting. She knows it can be inspiring.
01:36She knows it can be false and unfair and misleading. And she knows it's human nature to be curious about all of it. And as a result, even though it's a job you can never fully control, it's a job she handles beautifully.
01:47She always makes the extra effort to show people her real personality, her real values, her real standards, her real sense of style, her real sense of humor.
01:57And I've seen what a difference it makes. It's impossible to leave a restaurant with her without people wanting not just a picture, but to share a memory or an anecdote about why she matters so much.
02:07Mindy, as I look around and see all these people from your life, who have believed in you from the beginning, I'm just sorry that none of us doubted you because I know how much more fun that would make this for you.
02:24But we couldn't help it. We always knew you'd be famous, but we had no idea how beautifully you'd handle the job. And so it's high time your name joined those of your heroes right here on Hollywood Boulevard, not just names like Mary Tyler Moore and Lucille Ball, but names like H&M and Zara.
02:47I know how much all of it means to you. Congratulations, my soup snake. You'd be on the walk of talent if they had one. You'd be on the walk of friendship. You'd be on the walk of compassionate parenthood.
03:00But let's face it, all of these would be terrible field trips. So here you are instead, very deservedly, a person who means so much to so many on the Hollywood walk of fame.
03:10Thank you so much. Nathia, I'm so in awe of you. I'm so honored you're here. Eric Garcetti, all of our honored guests that came from so far, thank you so much. BJ, thank you. Fun fact, my daughter calls BJ Uncle Fofo.
03:32I have no idea why that is, but he's such an important and integral part of my family that sometimes I forget the reason that I know him is because we work together professionally.
03:45And I'm as starstruck by him now at age 29 as I was when I first met you at 24. I love you.
03:55My friend, Ike Barron Holtz, who's also here today. It's his birthday, actually, so thank you.
04:00He always says that whenever anything good happens, he says to me, take it in, men. Take it in. Be in the moment.
04:08And I think that I am physically incapable of taking things in.
04:14I don't know how to be in the moment. I just don't know.
04:18I'm always in the moment after the moment, regretting what I could have said in the moment.
04:22Or I'm before the moment, and I'm scared of the moment, and I'm sort of hyper-preparing for the moment.
04:28But this is one of the times where I'm just going to force myself to just be in the moment.
04:34I'm so happy. I love recognition.
04:40And this is just incredibly nice.
04:43Thank you to the city of Los Angeles.
04:45Thank you to Warner Brothers, my family, the incredible Channing Dungey, who has fought some major fights with me.
04:55You know, she's texting me from Hawaii on vacation over something at, you know, 11 o'clock at night.
05:01The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, you know, everyone who made this happen.
05:05I am so grateful to the fans of my work and to the audiences who got me here, who believed in me enough to think that I actually was a star,
05:14who watched my shows, even if their boyfriends said, that looks lame, or they read a review that says, we liked the first two seasons, but the third one fell off.
05:23I'm grateful to anyone who could just watch me in a movie or pick up my book of essays and wonder what's on my mind.
05:31I'm incredibly grateful to anyone who took a chance on me, and many of those people are here today.
05:38I remember as a kid watching my CTV with my mom and my dad.
05:44We'd watch Friends, Frazier, Seinfeld, and my whole family came together for it.
05:48My mom would come back from the hospital where she worked really long days delivering babies as an OB-GYN,
05:55and my dad would have just driven two to three hours back from his job site in Connecticut.
06:00And despite how challenging the days were, we would all sit together at night and watch us to come.
06:06It was more than entertainment for us.
06:08It was our way of relaxing.
06:10We could put down our defenses from hard days and just be together.
06:14I find it so powerful, that kind of storytelling on TV, how it was able to bring us together when words failed us or just took too much energy.
06:24I think it's remarkable.
06:26I think it's so remarkable how many connections that you can make by sharing laughs.
06:31And from the earliest age, I thought, I want to do that.
06:34I need to do that.
06:36And so lastly, I'm so lucky that my dad is here today.
06:40Can you believe it, Dad?
06:45He and my mom encouraged me to be an artist by giving me the gift of autonomy.
06:52And these are Indian immigrants in the 1980s and 90s.
06:55And I can't tell you how rare that is and how that is a story is one that I don't always see with my contemporaries.
07:01As a helicopter parent, I can hardly understand how they were able to do that.
07:07But I love you so much, Dad.
07:09And I love you, Mom.
07:11Okay, so I did it, folks.
07:12I am really in the moment.
07:14It feels strange but nice.
07:16And now that we're done, we can all drink cocktails and eat meatballs at the after party.
07:21You can meet my three rambunctious children.
07:23And thank you so much for coming in the middle of the day.
07:26It means the world to me.
07:27Thank you to all my friends.
07:28Anyone I didn't see here, I'll see you afterwards and thank you in person.
07:32But it means so much to me.
07:33And thank you, everybody, for watching at home.