"If I was you, I would just like, freak out and get really drunk
and then tell someone I was pregnant."
The Office’s Kelly Kapoor knows how to get what she wants.
"Ultimatums are key."
She’s adept at flattery.
"From now on, you guys are no longer losers!
So give yourselves a round of applause."
Lies big and small roll right off her tongue.
"I thought you’re not supposed to wear white to a wedding."
"I know but there was an emergency."
"I look really good in white."
And when all else fails, she can always make herself the victim.
"Do you have a question, Kelly?"
"Yeah, I have a lot of questions: Number one, how dare you?"
These are all the classic trait of a manipulator—
someone who exerts control over others by exploiting their vulnerabilities
and playing on their emotions.
"Can you make yourself cry?"
"No problem."
And yet, despite her untrustworthiness and underhandedness,
Kelly is also one of the series' most likable characters.
There’s just something endearing— even relatable-
about Kelly’s desperation to be recognized and loved.
"My resolution was to get more attention."
What is it about Kelly Kapoor that makes her coworkers—and the audience—
excuse her manipulative behavior, and even embrace it?
"One and two and cross and cross and down, sexy sexy sexy."
Here’s our Take on what makes Kelly such a master of manipulation,
and why we end up giving her the attention and affection she demands—
even if we know we’re being played.
"Who am I?
I’m Kelly Kapoor, the Business Bitch."
"Hi Everyone, I'm Susannah."
"And I'm Debra.
And you're watching The Take"
"Be sure to share and subscribe..."
"...and never miss a Take."
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At first glance, Kelly seems to have at least
a few manipulative traits that could be called Machiavellian.
"You have to make a choice.
It's either your daughter or me."
Named for the 16th-century Italian diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli,
the term describes the kind of morally dubious scheming
he believed was key to taking and maintaining power.
For Machiavelli, it was far better to be feared than loved—
an ethical question that leaders still grapple with today.
"Would I rather be feared or loved?
Um, easy.
Both.
I want people to be afraid of how much they love me."
But while Kelly would definitely rather be loved,
she still exhibits a lot of the things that psychotherapist Sheri Jacobson
attributes to a Machiavellian personality.
For instance: Kelly comes across as charming,
and extremely confident.
"What are your weaknesses?"
"I don’t have any, asshole."
She uses flattery often as a way to conceal her true feelings
and bend people to her will.
"Those glasses are so cool."
"Really?"
"Yeah, you look like Lisa Loeb or Tina Fey or someone.
You should definitely wear them all the time."
"Guess who just became the cutest girl in the office."
Kelly has also been known to manipulate others to get ahead—
for example, playing up her ethnicity for a chance to move up at work.
"Namaste."
"Oh, dear God."
She will lie and deceive when it’s required to get her way—
and she rationalizes her deception as justified.
"I lied, whatever.
Just fire me.
But you know what?
I did it because you guys didn’t come to my party,
and you said you would try to and then you didn’t even show up."
She’s also capable of causing others harm to achieve her means.
"This girl was really rude to me at the mall.
So I created a fake I.M. account from a hot guy at her high school,
and now I’m trying to make her anorexic."
And she’s not always aware of the consequences of her actions.
"You lied about being pregnant."
"Right.
So?"
"You really don't understand why that might make me kinda angry?"
"No."
"We're never getting back together."
"Why not?"
But while Kelly displays some Machiavellian tendencies,
she isn’t sinister about them.
In fact, compared to the manipulative behavior displayed by a lot
of other Dunder Mifflin employees,
"Ryan, to give the impression of sales, recorded them twice.
Another good term is 'fraud.'"
"Go on.
Have a nap...
Lie down, right here.
There’s a blanket in here."
"I think you’re a witch."
Kelly seems downright innocuous.
"I talk a lot, so I’ve learned to just tune myself out."
As Machiavelli himself believed, and Michael Scott paraphrased-
"But sometimes the ends justify the means."
In Kelly’s case, her end is simple: She wants to be loved
"I want you to tell me that you care about me.
That is what I want."
and she wants other people to think she’s special.
"You could ask me, 'Kelly, what’s the biggest company in the world?'
And I’d be like, 'blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah.'
Giving you the exact right answer."
These are ego-driven desires, but they’re also universal ones—
and the fact that Kelly goes to such manipulative lengths
to attain them is what makes them funny.
"Kelly Kapoor, what a delicious surprise."
"Professor Powell, you are on speaker phone."
"Uh, why?"
"...Beyonce, pink the color, Pink the person, hot dogs,
basically anything that is awesome."
Kelly’s preoccupations and her manipulative instincts
are decidedly adolescent.
She loves clothes,
"Fashion show, fashion show, fashion show at lunch!"
boys,
"Oh my God, he is so cute!
Would you talk to him for me
and see if he likes me?"
and celebrity gossip.
"Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, they had a baby and
they named it Suri, and then Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie,
they had a baby, too.
And both babies are amazing!"
Her ideas about love all seem to be shaped by rom-coms.
"I never thought of him in that way.
But, I guess in most romantic comedies,
the guy you're supposed to be with is the one you never thought of
in that way."
"We’re running off into the sunset!"
"I’ll help you."
"And that is what you call a meet-cute."
This reflects some of star Mindy Kaling’s own obsessions—
as she would later expand on in The Mindy Project.
"I’m basically Sandra Bullock!"
But as Kaling also told Time Out in 2012, Kelly Kapoor was
"not all that autobiographical.
We based her character on a mean teenager."
"I just want you to know that I will be mean to Jessica
if you want me to be."
"Oh no, no.
It's fine, Kelly."
"It's really no problem.
I was already planning on
being mean to her."
And indeed, Kelly is often seen verbally harassing her peers,
"I don’t talk trash, I talk smack."
and cruelly excluding others.
"I heard you were looking for someone to replace Ryan."
"This isn’t radio, though, there’s a visual component to what we’re doing."
in the language and underhanded methods of the typical "mean girl."
"Oh my god, I love that skirt, where did you get it?"
"That is the ugliest effing skirt I’ve ever seen."
"Oh my God, I love it..."
Kelly also uses manipulation strategies that parenting researcher Tyler Jacobson
has identified as common to teens.
Like: guilt-tripping, a means of emotional manipulation
that can even tip over into threats of suicide.
"If I get to stay and Ryan is laid off, I will kill myself."
"If they get married before I do, I’m going to kill myself."
"Basically, nobody does anything for me anymore
unless I threaten to kill myself."
Kelly also frequently plays the victim, whether it’s in her relationships,
"Ryan used me as an object."
or even just to bring attention to herself.
"She’s hot, OK?
Because if you are saying
that Hillary Swank isn’t hot, then you are saying that I am not hot.
Because obviously I’m not as hot as Hillary Swank!"
Finally, Kelly has a teenager’s emotional volatility
and sense of retaliation, quick to lash out with hurtful words.
"Maybe you should go marry a meth dealer with crabs."
or even big, explosive actions.
"My boyfriend dumped me, so, I stole his boat."
Also like a teen, Kelly is image-conscious and obsessed with
emulating the icons of pop culture she worships.
All I have to do is drink maple syrup, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and water
for all three meals.
I'm gonna look amazing."
She’s adopted the self-centered attitudes she’s learned
from celebrities and reality TV.
"You can’t click on these Kardashian links,
that’s why you have so many viruses."
"Well, help me!"
In fact, all her interests and goals seem to revolve around
what she’s seen in magazines, TV, and movies.
"You know what,Dwight, you need to go back there and
you need to Pretty Woman their asses."
Mimicking the most famous people in this country offers Kelly,
who’s clearly conflicted about her Indian heritage,
"Well, you know what my middle name is?
Rajnigandha.
And I hate it."
the comfort of cultural assimilation.
"It's to pick up my little sisters from school.
We're really tight.
We're like the Kardashians."
But most importantly, pop culture feeds directly into Kelly’s
love of manipulation.
Kelly longs to live in the petty, hyper-competitive world of reality TV
"I have warned EVERYONE that I will come for them
if they even DARE to try to copy anything that I'm doing
this holiday season."
and because there’s a documentary crew filming her, she technically does.
"You know what, Kelly?
This is the real world.
Not The Real World: Scranton."
Kelly performs for cameras just like one of her reality TV idols,
bringing the schemes and the melodrama.
For Kelly, being a mean girl or a Kardashian is the height of status—
they’re the stars of the show, and everything they do
is inherently special.
Elevating every part of her life into drama is how Kelly gets
the attention she desires above all else.
"Think sometimes people are really mean to the hot popular girl."
And nowhere is her thirst for drama more evident than in
her most defining relationship.
"Over the weekend, Ryan Bailey Howard and I got divorced."
"It was like destiny."
"I-I realized that, for whatever reason,
I just couldn’t do better than Kelly."
"Aww!"
In Ryan, Kelly meets her Machiavellian match—
which is bad news for both of them.
"We belong-We belong together, Ryan."
Their toxic romance is based entirely in manipulation—
whether it’s the outright lies that Kelly tells to keep Ryan around,
"I hope you’re still committed because I’m pregnant."
or just the constant undermining that Ryan regularly employs
when talking to her.
"But you lie all the time.
You lie for no reason.
Ryan, you just like to lie.
"I’d die for you too."
"You really would?"
While The Office gives us several true love stories to aspire to,
Ryan and Kelly’s relationship is probably one of its more true to life.
"Everyone who watches the show thinks of themselves as Jim and Pam,
but are probably much more like Ryan and Kelly."
As Kaling and B.J. Novak have explained, Ryan and Kelly are an only slightly
exaggerated version of their own dysfunctional dynamic in the real world.
"We were sort of these always-clashing soulmates on the writing staff,
and people were very amused by that, and decided to write
a Ryan-Kelly romance based on that."
So why does Kelly keep putting up with it,
"So you’re dumping me?"
"Let’s be adults about this.
Let’s have sex one more time.
And if you have any extra cash, that would be amazing."
"Okay."
especially when she has better options?
Kelly’s brief romance with Darryl is the complete opposite of
her affair with Ryan, one based in respect and honesty—
which only proves confusing to Kelly.
"Darryl Philben is the most complicated man that I’ve ever met.
I mean, who says exactly what they’re thinking?"
In season 9, Kelly finally seems to find a real future with
the handsome, successful pediatrician Ravi, who genuinely loves her.
"Now you look at me like you’re adoring me,
I’m gonna look at the camera like I don’t even know you’re there."
"But I do adore you."
But ultimately, both of these romances are short-lived.
Ryan manipulates her into breaking it off with both men—
"Maybe we weren't right together, but, it's weird.
I'd rather she be alone than with somebody.
Is that love?"
It works, because-in fact- Kelly doesn’t actually want
to be treated with consistent love, honesty, and respect.
"Um, why did I just receive a mass email from you that said
that you don’t like me?
Do you realize how hard that makes me like you, Andy?"
To Kelly—a reality TV addict and teenager at heart—
manipulation and melodrama are what romance is all about.
"Ravi makes me incredibly happy.
And Ryan puts me through so much drama.
So I guess I just have to decide which of those is more important to me."
So while Ryan doesn’t give her that healthy, "marriage and kids"
relationship she says and even thinks she’s looking for,
"Kelly and I both agreed that we would just have fun.
I’m learning that fun for Kelly is... getting married and having babies.
Immediately.
With me."
he does give her the drama and excitement that, deep down,
she really wants most of all.
"You gave your baby an allergic reaction just to talk to me?"
Kelly Kapoor may come across as equal parts vapid and vindictive,
self-sabotaging and unsure of what she really wants,
but we also see her grow over the course of the series—
developing strong friendships with her workmates, who ultimately
want the best for her.
"Remember how it felt when he cheated on you though?"
"Which time?"
Meanwhile, we also find ourselves loving and rooting for her—
and not just because Kelly is a relative good compared to some of
the more openly malicious and conniving characters we meet.
We can recognize how Kelly is the product of our modern,
gossip-fueled culture, one that celebrates manipulation
and competitiveness,
creates a thirst for melodrama, and rewards the vain and the self-centered.
"I think we should do cupcakes.
I am one of the few people who looks hot eating a cupcake."
But deep down, Kelly also reminds us of the secret part of ourselves
that feels—that knows- that we’re special and that
we deserve more.
Even if we’re not nearly so shameless about getting it.
"And that is how it’s done."
"This is the Take."
"What do you want our Take on next?"
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[Music]