How Mindy Kaling Shut Down A Sexist Reporter During The Ocean’s 8 Press Tour

Ocean's 8 will be Mindy Kaling's second big-budget Hollywood film of the year, after A Wrinkle In Time, where she co-starred with Oprah Winfrey.

By: Tatsam Mukherjee |
May 26, 2018 1:08 pm

Unless you’re living under a rock, you know you shouldn’t mess with Mindy Kaling. The creator of the hit series The Mindy Project, bestselling author of Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? – Kaling has been a vocal advocate on matters around gender equality.

ALSO READ: The Ocean’s 8 trailer makes us wonder when we will get our all-women ensemble film

Which is why she was most disturbed during the press tour of her upcoming film, Ocean’s 8, when a reporter posed this question to her – “Mindy, you to play a jeweler. Now you’re not married and neither have you been engaged. So how do you know about diamonds?”

Recalling the tone-deaf question in front of TV host Stephen Meyers, she explained what the man was implying – “So you’re a famous spinster, you’d never been near a diamond before. If you’re not married or engaged, you’ve never seen a diamond. No man has ever loved you!’”

And as soon as she finished recounting the most ‘incredulous’ question from the Ocean’s 8 press tour, Meyer interjected about the sheer stupidity of the question saying, the reporter was probably confused about how ‘acting’ works. Considering, none of the actors had been around a heist before either.

Ocean’s 8 will be Mindy Kaling’s second big-budget Hollywood film of the year, after A Wrinkle In Time. The latter saw Kaling share screen space with Oprah Winfrey for the first time ever. In the Gary Ross film, Kaling is sharing screen space with her idols like Sarah Paulson and Cate Blanchett. This is her moment in showbiz, and she if of course, not going to be ‘nice’ about rude, offensive questions.