- Hi, I'm Mindy Kaling.
- And I'm Tracey Wigfield
and we're in studio with The Hollywood Reporter.
(slow drum music)
- Very exciting, "Four Weddings and a Funeral".
The first thing I wanted to ask you is
What's your most romantic comedy moment in real life?
- In real life.
- Romantic comedy moment in real life?
These days I'm having more of those
like new parent baby comedy moments--
- [Tracey] Yeah, same.
- Than romantic comedy moment.
You met your husband at work.
- I met my husband on Mindy's show
so that was kind of romantic.
- I wish you had been foes at the beginning--
- [Tracey] I know.
- But you were friends to start.
- No, unfortunately he never was like
trying to stick it to me or something--
- And then you fell in love.
- Like I bested him in the office
and then in the bedroom.
That didn't happen.
(both laughing)
I was at a wedding once that a hurricane hit.
That felt like it was from a movie.
It was in Texas and (laughing) it destroyed the whole thing,
we all got alerts on our phone
that was like "A hurricane's coming"
and then it did and it like hit,
the whole tent got knocked over
and we had to all hide in the catering house (laughs)
Felt like something romantic to happen
but it was like scary.
(both laughing)
- So it was kind of romantic comedy slash horror movie.
- Yeah, yeah, that's right.
- There are so many great meet cutes in "Four Weddings".
- Yes.
- What was your meet cute?
- Oh we have a good one.
- We do have a good meet cute.
We have a couple things.
One is so we were working on The Mindy Project season one
and then 30 Rock was ending the fall that we were starting
and we kept hearing about writers over there
that might have been good to hire when 30 Rock ended
and one name that came up
was this girl Tracey Wigfield.
Everyone's like she's so funny,
and you know she got married really young,
and has a kid so she's married and has a kid
and the kid's like 10 years old
and we're like "What an interesting story."
- What a Christian woman.
- What a Christian woman and what a true love story
and then Jack Burditt, your friend,
and then she came to work on the show
and for a while we didn't know that that was your deal
until someone was like "How old is your son?"
(Tracey laughing)
- And I was like "No son, single woman."
- Single woman.
Why did that rumor get started?
- We never got to the bottom of it.
I don't know.
- So specific.
- Also I don't know if you remember
but the first day of work
I had never met Mindy
but I was like a big fan of hers
and wanted to make a good impression, obviously,
and I got through the whole day
and I was like "This went like really well,
"I feel like I (laughing) contributed a lot,
"and she like thinks I'm cool."
and then at the end of the day
I was like peeing in the bathroom stall
and you just like (laughing) opened the door
and saw me like bottomless.
(laughing)
- Was it that?
I thought you walked in on me.
- I thought you walked in on me.
'Cause remember the door didn't lock.
- Yes, yeah.
- And you just walked in on me
(laughing) I was like "Oh no, I've ruined it all.".
- No but it made us--
- She's seen my pubes.
- It had the opposite effect,
it grew us closer,
me seeing her pubes.
- [Marya] That's amaze--
that's a wonderful meet cute.
- I was like "Great pubes."
- Great pubes, still to this day.
- Let's talk a little bit about the cast of "Four Weddings"
'cause the original movie,
it's an amazing movie,
but it's very British pasty white.
- Yes.
- And so what did you hope to accomplish
with your super diverse cast?
- You know, when someone says
"Do you wanna adapt Four Weddings and a Funeral?"
there's a lot of excitement about it.
MGM really wanted us to do something with the property
but it was thing of,
I don't know I did it with The Office
where we tried to replicate something that was perfect
and everyone got really mad
for the first six episodes.
(all laughing)
more time had gone by since "Four Weddings" had started,
and we decided we're not gonna have anyone
who's gonna be Hugh Grant.
We're not gonna try to find a guy
who is like a floppy-haired, white, incredibly compelling.
No one could do that
and to be honest that was very of its time
and Hugh Grant is Hugh Grant because of it
so we thought what were like the new icons?
What are the kind of things that we would love to see?
You know, I'm Indian,
Tracey you're like in an interracial marriage.
- (laughing) Yes.
- I said relationship but it's a full marriage.
- No we're married.
Stop saying that.
- But are the people we surround ourselves with
don't necessarily look like what's reflected
in a lot of TV shows and our friendships
so we wanted to do something,
we definitely wanted an African American woman
to be the star,
and we wanted a British Pakistani man to be the male lead.
- [Marya] Mm (affirmative)
- And that felt different and worth doing.
- Yeah.
- And Nathalie Emmanuel.
- Yes.
- Amazing.
- [Tracey] Yeah.
- Coming off of Game of Thrones,
she was very vocal about the lack of diversity
with Game of Thrones and how that affected
how her character,
when her character died,
the audience was really affected by it.
- Right - Yeah.
- So can you guarantee that she's not the funeral
in "Four Weddings and a Funeral"?
(both laughing)
- Gets her head cut off, was the same.
We didn't know that was how she was gonna die.
- We beheaded Nathalie Emmanuel.
- We killed her on the show in the same way.
- We wanted to traumatize the world all over again.
No we can say that she does not die.
- She does not die.
- But having her,
'cause we were obviously started shooting this
nine months before she had her big climactic scene
on Game of Thrones
but the amount of people that love her--
- [Tracey] Yeah.
- and feel, I mean I don't know how you could
relate to (laughing) a character on Game of Thrones
but just loved her and felt seen by her
because she was one of the most prominent
people of color on the show was really moving to us
and we were really excited that the fans there
can see her do something completely different.
- Yeah, I'm excited for people to see her doing comedy too.
- Yeah.
- And it's such a different thing for her
but one of my favorite things about it
is she's just so winning
like she naturally is so likable
that you're just like "Oh, I root for her"
even though her character is constantly making mistakes
and sleeping with (laughing) another woman's husband
and doing things that you know she shouldn't be doing.
You kind of don't care because
you just, you know--
- [Mindy] You're always on her side.
- Yeah, you're invested in her.
- Yeah, yeah, and that's a good segue to my question
that a lot of people define their relationships,
for better or for worse,
from the first romantic comedies they saw.
- Huh.
- So for a lot of the young audience,
you're on Hulu, it's a streamer,
there's gonna be a young audience watching the show.
What do you hope that they take away from the show?
- That's such a nice question.
- It's their first romantic comedy.
- I think there's so much stuff in this
that I would've loved to have seen
when I was growing up
so it's nice that you bring that up
and I think I hadn't thought about it in that terms
but it would be great for people to see
first of all, London this way.
- And neighborhoods in London
that you don't get to see.
You know Notting Hill's beautiful and we see a lot of that
but Hounslow, which is really diverse,
not wealthy neighborhood,
that we spend a lot of time in the show in
and just for people to say like
"Oh wow. Look, someone like me is finding love.
"Someone who's great-looking and funny"
Cause, you know, I spent my childhood
watching While You Were Sleeping,
and You've Got Mail,
and all these movies
and just being like
"Yeah, yeah, no one looks like me in this
"but I'm just gonna project myself on it
"because I love it so much."
And to make it so that people
don't have to do that as much is great.
- Yeah.
- It turns out there's good-looking people in every color.
- You prove me wrong.
- Yes, you've always said that.
- I've always said.
- But like it's no small thing.
I mean when we went to Crazy Rich Asians
what was one of profound things it did was
show the female gaze onto Asian men
like they were so gorgeous
and it's great that Brandon and Nikesh
get to be these like they're so winning
and handsome and they play like best friends in the movie
and those relationships exist,
we just don't see them.
- Yeah, they have amazing chemistry.
- I know.
Aren't they great in those scenes at the bank?
They're so good.
- Really good together.
You made a conscious decision to stay true
to the original "Four Weddings" and shoot in London.
Was that helpful?
Do you find London to be particularly romantic
or was it challenging?
- [Mindy] So romantic.
I mean you moved there for so long.
- [Tracey] Yeah, we were there for like three months
and Mindy was there too for,
like we each took a chunk, the EPs,
and it's such a beautiful,
it's such an old city with such history,
and there's so many iconic places there,
especially compared to like (laughing) L.A.
where eveything's from like 14 years ago.
It's just such a iconic, romantic city naturally
and it was great that we got that production value
that we could shoot in Trafalgar Square
and, you know, (laughing) in like manor houses
and have a wedding in just these like beaut--
One of our weddings is in the house from The Favourite
where like Queen Elizabeth I grew up.
It's like crazy like we get to just see all these places,
and a lot of them in different ways
than you've seen them in other TV shows and movies.
- And London is racially,
you know one of the reasons it's great to live in L.A.,
and to shoot things in New York
is that they're really diverse
and that's interesting to me
and London is the same way
and it's just different racial populations
and they were ones that I was excited
to tell stories about.
They have the same issues of illegal immigration
and racism towards immigrants,
we do that, we talk about that a lot in the series.
- And especially what's going on right now with Brexit
and it's just an interesting time
to tell a story about London.
- Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Another thing that I noticed was
you had a play within a play
which is the reality show--
- Mm-hmm (affirmative)
- that's in the plot.
It's kind of great because
it really kind of brings this version to today
and how people's lives are,
especially among with romance,
reality shows are another way that people
look at their own relationships.
- Right.
- So how did it come about
that you wanted to create this reality show?
- You love reality TV.
- I love reality shows.
I've written on multiple television shows
episodes about reality television.
- There's one time and Tracey Wigfield be like
"You know what I have an idea about?
"How about if we do send up of Real Housewives?"
(both laughing)
So it's just a ticking clock.
- I don't go a lot of places.
Yeah and I had never heard of "Love Island".
The other British writers in the room
had told me about it
and then we would watch clips of it and stuff
and it was like okay well I've never seen this parodied,
in this specific kind of,
you know 'cause you've seen
trashy American girls on reality shows
but I've never seen a parody of that kind of girl,
that sort of Northern British girl,
and the actress--
- [Mindy] Sophia
- Sophia, who plays Zara
just had such a specific funny take on
and she has such sweetness to her
that it just felt like a great mine for comedy.
- Do we really have to go to this party?
You friends don't even like me.
- What are you talking about?
My friends love you.
- No they don't,
they think I'm trashy and that my boobs are fake,
which they are but your friends don't know that.
- It was fun shooting that stuff
but it's kind of fun for us to flex
where we get to be like
okay now we get to edit and show
this "Love Island" parody,
the credits were so funny.
- Were so funny with like the horrible stock shots
of rose petals.
- Rose petals and stuff so
you know that's what's nice about an hour-long
is we get to have these ideas
and let them breathe
and luckily "Love Island" is such a phenomenon that--
- People will know what we're parodying now.
- It's amazing, that dichotomy between extremely proper
and very trashy in the UK.
- I know Chris Schlager,
one of our writers was saying like
you always thought London was like the Queen
and like really fancy and he's like
"London's like trash too"
like you watch television shows (laughing)
where like guys' penises are out at like 8 o'clock
(laughing) on network television.
It's disgusting also
and we wanted to show that in our show.
- Do you each have a favorite quote
from a romantic comedy you wanna leave us with?
- Oh my god.
- Yes.
My favorite quote from a romantic comedy
is from "Bridget Jones' Diary"
when Darcy, played by Colin Firth,
says to Bridget Jones, played by Renee Zellweger,
"I like you just as you are."
- [Tracey] Aw that's really nice.
- Yes, I like that.
That was my favorite.
Do you have one?
- Um oh gee.
I don't know.
I love "Love Actually"
and we kind of straight up rip it off in our show,
I love in "Love Actually" when Colin Firth, again,
(Tracey and Mindy laughing)
says to his maid that
"Driving you home is the best part of my day"
I always thought was so sweet.
- [Mindy] Aw.
- And we kind of do a sort of a play on that
with two of our characters.
- Excellent.
- Colin Firth.
- Yeah.
- Way to go Colin Firth.
- I know.
- Getting a lot of representation.
I like him in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"--
- Another romantic film.
- The most romantic film of all, hilarious.
Hilarious movie.
- Mindy Kaling, Tracey Wigfield
thank you so much for being here.
- Thanks.
- "Four Weddings and a Funeral" on Hulu, check it out.
(dramatic swipe)