Mindy Kaling Celebrates The Mindy Project 's 10th Anniversary with a Nod to the Show's Body Positivity

Mindy Kaling at the Los Angeles premiere of "Never Have I Ever" Season 3 held at Regency Village Theatre on August 11, 2022 in Los Angeles, California
Mindy Kaling at the Los Angeles premiere of "Never Have I Ever" Season 3 held at Regency Village Theatre on August 11, 2022 in Los Angeles, California
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Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Mindy Kaling

Mindy Kaling is looking back on The Mindy Project in celebration of its milestone anniversary.

In an Instagram post Tuesday, Kaling, 43, shared a montage of scenes from the series that ran from 2012-2017, commemorating its 10-year anniversary.

"This Sunday marks the 10 year (!!!) anniversary of the premiere of The Mindy Project. I love this show so much," the post began. "The cast, crew and writers room remain some of my favorite and most important people in my life today. I wanted to play a woman who was basically a good person, but also very insane, and had tons of stuff she needed to work on. Coming from The Office, I wanted the show to be packed with jokes, but also, like You've Got Mail or When Harry Met Sally, really romantic and made you want to live in New York City."

Kaling shared that when coming up with the idea for the show, she wanted to be sure the main character, played by her, showed a different type of female lead than what was usually seen on television.

"In addition, I wanted to wear head-to-toe amazing designer fits even though I wasn't (and still am not) a size 2," she wrote. "I think we accomplished that! It will always be the most fun six years (117 episodes!) of my life!"

The Office alum said she would be sharing some of her favorite "moments and scenes" from the series throughout the week.

The Mindy Project first premiered on Fox in 2012. The series ran for three seasons on the network before Hulu picked it up, where it continued for three more seasons before its finale in 2017.

The show, created by and starring Kaling, centered around Mindy Lahiri, a lively doctor working in New York City, and her colleagues at an OB/GYN office.

Kaling has long been an outspoken about body positivity, both on and off the show.

Last year, she recalled a "devastating" moment when she felt most self-conscious about her body, and said it was when she was 25, working as a writer and actor.

While in the writer's room for a TV show, one of her co-workers — a fellow actor on the show — suggested that their character tell Kaling's that she could lose 15 lbs.

"This is my greatest insecurity and someone just called it out," she recalled to Good Morning America. "It's really devastating."

Kaling, who said that she was regularly getting up early in the morning during that time to fit in a gym workout before her dual jobs, took the incident as a moment for self-reflection.

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"I had a reckoning where I'm like, 'People are scrutinizing [me], and not only are they scrutinizing [me], they're verbalizing their displeasure with how I look because I don't look a certain way. That kind of dissonance has really affected so much of what I write about [and] the kind of characters I play," she said. "Almost all of those kinds of things [in my work] come from something really real."

The Never Have I Ever co-creator said that for years, there was a lack of diverse body types in Hollywood.

"On TV, if you were really thin, then you could be the lead. Otherwise, you had to be like 250 pounds, and you had to be the slapstick comic relief," she said. "But what was crazy, what was left out, is just like this range of people which is a majority of American women over the age of 24. What if you're like a [size] 12 and you want to just live your life and look cute and date?"

THE MINDY PROJECT, Mindy Kaling,
THE MINDY PROJECT, Mindy Kaling,

Everett Collection Mindy Kaling

In September of last year, Kaling shared a throwback photo of the cast on the set of The Mindy Project, writing on her Instagram, "I found this in my favorites in my pics."

The group shot showed Kaling sitting amongst her costars — including Ed Weeks, Ike Barinholtz, Rebecca Rittenhouse, Xosha Roquemore, Fortune Feimster, Garret Dillahunt — sitting inside a conference room at the fictitious Shulman and Associates medical office.

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"The gang from Shulman and Associates!" she continued her caption, before noting castmate Beth Grant, Adam Pally and Chris Messina's absence from the picture. "We are missing @bethgrantactor and @adam.pally and Chris, but I love these conference room scenes so much. Ed was usually running a meeting and we kept interrupting."

"Man I miss these guys," Kaling added alongside a red heart emoji.In 2019, Rittenhouse — who went on to work with Kaling again in Hulu's Four Weddings and a Funeraltold PEOPLE Now that the actress is "the best boss you could ever hope to have."