“Who would’ve thought that [I] would be the sort of psychologist or uncle or advisor to an 18- or 17-year-old Indian American girl going through high school,” McEnroe said in a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight. “So I got to credit Mindy Kaling.” The decision to cast McEnroe in her semi-autobiographical series was a nostalgic one for Kaling, who grew up in a tennis-loving household. “It turned out her father was a big tennis fan and must’ve talked about me a lot when she was growing up,” he said. “He was in India and it’s sort of her story.”
But while Kaling had known about McEnroe for her entire life, he couldn’t say the same about her. McEnroe revealed that he had never even heard of the former star of “The Office” until she approached him about the show.
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“I met her at this Vanity Fair Oscar party and we were just crossing paths and [his wife] Patty goes, ‘Oh, that’s Mindy Kaling!’” he said. “I wasn’t even sure who it was then and she’s like, ‘Oh my god, I have this idea of you narrating this show,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, sure you do. Of course I’m gonna narrate this show.’ And then, hey, it actually—this is actually working!”
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