Mindy Kaling Confirms She's Having a Baby Girl and Talks Oprah Winfrey Spilling the Pregnancy Beans
On an episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the talk show host treated the expectant actress to her big indulgence: jelly doughnuts. “Thank you … It’s my favorite thing and not every place has them,” Kaling said. “In L.A. every time you try and get a doughnut, it’s full of matcha or bacon or something."
A month after sources confirmed to PEOPLE that Mindy Kaling is expecting a girl, the actress has confirmed the happy news herself.
The Mindy Project star opened up about her pregnancy during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Friday, revealing that she wanted to know the gender of her baby “way early.”
“I am not waiting,” she said. “I’m having a girl.”
Kaling, 38, also took a moment to address the fact that it was none other than Oprah Winfrey who confirmed the baby news. (Winfrey, 63, previously told PEOPLE that she was standing in the film’s press line at Disney’s D23 expo in July when her castmate told her that she’s expecting.)
Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Babies newsletter.
“She did announce it,” said Kaling with a laugh. “I had told Oprah and Reese [Witherspoon] on a movie we’re working on, A Wrinkle in Time, and she announced it at press — she was very excited.”
“If anyone is going to announce big news about your private life, Oprah Winfrey is the person,” said Kaling. “You can’t complain that much about it. And you also can’t be like, ‘Hey, Oprah, zip it’ — because she’s almost like a religious figure. So if there’s one person I have to tell my daughter about that revealed her existence to the world, Oprah is pretty good.”
“I think I learned a long time ago that it’s probably not a good idea to reprimand Oprah,” she added. “There are worse things!”
Kaling also joked about how being “very, very pregnant” has given her a newfound love for sitting down.
“I’ve had a pretty great time of it so far,” she said of her pregnancy. “But I think I took a lot for granted before this, now that I’m my current situation — like, sitting. I’m obsessed with sitting. And even when I was standing back there I was looking at this chair and I was like: ‘Can’t wait to sit in that chair. That beautiful comfy chair.’ ”
“Getting up is going to be challenging,” she quipped. “Counting on you to hoist me out of this chair.”
News of Kaling’s pregnancy broke on July 17. At the time, a source told PEOPLE that the star “just started telling her friends that she’s pregnant, but she’s not telling anyone — not even close friends — who the father is.”
The actress debuted her baby bump for the first time on July 27 at the Television Critics Association panel for her show.
“Mindy is really motherly to the people she loves and cares about,” an insider previously told PEOPLE, adding that Kaling will be an excellent mom. “She takes care of them.”
