{"id":755407,"date":"2026-06-23T08:24:30","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T08:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/755407\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T08:24:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T08:24:30","slug":"mindy-kaling-on-not-suitable-for-work-order-title-friends-ties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/755407\/","title":{"rendered":"Mindy Kaling On ‘Not Suitable For Work’ Order, Title, ‘Friends’ Ties"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMindy Kaling<\/a>\u2018s latest series, Not Suitable For Work<\/a>, is wrapping its first season on Hulu tomorrow, June 23, with two back-to-back episodes. They are Episodes 108 and 109 of the ensemble comedy about 20-somethings in New York navigating first jobs and love.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhy the odd nine-episode season, in-between the standard eight- and 10-episode streaming cycles? <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI had done nine for The Sex Lives of College Girls, we had done an hourlong pilot for comedies, and then doing half hours,\u201d Kaling said during an interview with Deadline tied to the Season 1 finale of NSFW. \u201cIt was actually something that I copied from Danny McBride, I think he did it for The Righteous Gemstones, he did an hourlong pilot, and then half-hour shows, and I was like, that is so smart. So, that\u2019s what I did for those two shows.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAll four seasons of McBride\u2019s The Righteous Gemstones consisted of nine episodes. The series launched with an hourlong pilot episode and also went hourlong with the Season 2 premiere and a couple of finales, including the series closer. Sex Lives, which Kaling co-created with Justin Noble, ran for three 10-episode seasons made of half-hour episodes following an hourlong series premiere.<\/p>\n

\t\tNSFW: Spicing Up \u2018Murray Hill\u2019 Title\t<\/p>\n

\n\tNot Suitable For Work\u00a0is Kaling\u2019s first series as sole creator since the 2012\u00a0The Mindy Project,\u00a0which was developed at NBC and picked up to series at Fox, moving to Hulu after Season 3. When the Warner Bros.-produced\u00a0ensemble comedy\u00a0was first sold to Hulu, it was named\u00a0Murray Hill, after the Manhattan neighborhood where the quintet of young central characters live.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe title was subsequently changed to Not Suitable For Work. It does not quite fit the show as it is not racy and there is virtually no sex in it. There is some office stuff but it is not a workplace show either. Still, audiences seem to be responding to the name as NSFW has been consistently ranking high on Disney+\/Hulu\u2019s Daily Top 10 in the U.S., bolstering the show\u2019s chances for a Season 2 renewal.<\/p>\n

\n\tDeadline asked Kaling how she feels about the title change and which one she likes better, Murray Hill or NSFW.<\/p>\n

\n\tKALING: Well, I remember for backstory that I saw you about a month ago, and you said \u2014 and this is, I think, very Nellie Andreeva, if I may say \u2014 you were like, I thought your show was really cute, but one thing, I hate your title. I really appreciate your candor, in a world where people never say what they really feel, I thought that was such a funny and again candid thing to say. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe original title of the show is Murray Hill, and one of the big notes that Craig Erwich, who is my boss, but also my old friend from Hulu \u2014 he\u2019s the one that saved The Mindy Project and brought it over to Hulu for three more seasons \u2014 is that he loved the title, The Sex Lives of College Girls, and he said, listen, I want people to know this is a funny, sexy Mindy Kaling show.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo he asked for a title change, and I gotta say, I have never been someone who\u2019s really prided myself on coming up with good titles for things. I mean, I became the most well-known for show called The Mindy Project, that gives you a window into how uncreative I am about titles. I don\u2019t remember where Not Suitable For Work came in, I want to say it was something Clancy Collins from Warner Brothers had suggested.<\/p>\n

\n\tI think no one would argue that NSFW has definitely more spice to it than Murray Hill, but I like them all. I\u2019ll also say that some my favorite shows, I look back, and I\u2019m like, the titles just become words, and they kind of, they disappear, they have no meaning. But that\u2019s the evolution of the title.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Now you have to live up to that title, so should people expect more sex next season?<\/p>\n

\n\tKALING: What\u2019s funny about my shows is they really reflect a kind of repressed child of immigrants side of me, which is, in Never Have I Ever, it was a character who really wanted to have sex, and she would talk about it all the time, but she really never did, and The Sex Lives Of College Girls, it could be really called The Friendship Life Of College Girls, because all they did was hang out with their friends. There were obviously sexy moments, but it was really about these relationships and their friendships, and I think that about this show too.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is one or two montages, but when I picture the show, I really picture the roommates talking at their dining tables in their room, so I\u2019m not saying that it\u2019s a bait and switch, but when you say there should be more sex, I\u2019m like, I guess I gotta really put my money where my mouth is and actually deliver on the sexiness of the title next season, should we get another season.<\/p>\n

\t\tThe \u2018Friends\u2019 Comparison\t<\/p>\n

\n\tSingle, good-looking 20-somethings renting two apartments across the hall in a posh Manhattan building who strike friendships and romantic entanglements automatically evoke Friends. With its identical setup, Not Suitable For Work is inevitably triggering Friends comparisons, along with similar criticism the NBC sitcom faced about people in entry-level jobs \u2014 or actors auditioning as is the case with Friends\u2018 Joey and NSFW\u2018s Kel \u2014 being able to afford such expensive lodging.<\/p>\n

\n\tKALING: I don\u2019t get the criticism that their apartments are unrealistically nice. I get it for other shows but two of our main characters are investment bankers, so I didn\u2019t understand that criticism of the show. Not that I feel like it\u2019s a good use of my time to rebut comments said online or rebut criticisms, but that particular one I think is not good and wrong for anyone who knows investment bankers.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo live in Murray Hill, which is not Tribeca and not Fifth Avenue, with roommates, and to be an investment banker for that square footage of apartment is actually I think pretty realistic.<\/p>\n

\n\tListen, I love Friends, I think I\u2019ve seen every episode of Friends, and what I love the most about it is that it understood that timeless thing of your friends become your family. I think our show has a slightly different question, which is, what happens when your friends are also your coworkers, your competitors, and sometimes the people that you\u2019re attracted to, and what I think both shows share \u2014 because it\u2019s about people the same age \u2014 is that they both reflect this moment where adulthood feels full of possibilities.<\/p>\n

\n\tI like making TV like that, about hopeful people, places that you want to live, and people that are filled with ambition. I am ambitious, everyone I know is ambitious. I know that Gen Z has this, like a lot of pejorative things are said about them, but it was so hard to beat Gen Z \u2014 you had your prom during Covid, or you graduated during Covid, and I feel like there\u2019s a lot of disparaging things said about the generation, but the ones that I know and I\u2019ve worked with work harder than anyone else. They\u2019re all workaholics that want to make up for lost time, and I absolutely love being able to represent them in the show.<\/p>\n

\n\tFriends\u2019 holiday episodes also informed Not Suitable For Work\u2019s Season 1 finale. Check back Tuesday for Deadline\u2019s postmortem interview with Kaling about the closer and what could be in store for a potential second season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mindy Kaling\u2018s latest series, Not Suitable For Work, is wrapping its first season on Hulu tomorrow, June 23,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,118238,122122,348],"class_list":["post-755407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-mindy-kaling","tag-not-suitable-for-work","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}