Mindy Kaling Responds to Backlash Over South Asian ‘Velma,’ Jokes About Misremembering Representation in ‘Monsters Inc.’

Mindy Kaling has responded to criticisms of Velma’s race being changed for the upcoming HBO Max animated Scooby-Doo spinoff, Velma.

The Never Have I Ever co-creator spoke about the mixed response to her taking over the mantle of the nerdy Mystery Inc. member with Late Night host Seth Meyers on Thursday.

The series, which was announced in February, is an adult animated take on the sleuth famous for losing her glasses and will explore her origin story. Kaling serves as a producer on the show and will voice the character who has appeared across a number of Scooby-Doo animated series and movies since the original series debuted in 1969.

Following the initial announcement that Kaling was set to voice the beloved character, the actress said the response was largely positive.

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“When it was announced that I was going to do the voice of Velma, people were very supportive and happy on Twitter,” Kaling told Meyers. “And so I felt great.”

But some of that excitement morphed into backlash when it was later revealed that the character, who has long been imagined as white, would be South Asian for her latest chapter, with Kaling telling Meyers that “people were not happy” on social media.

“There was a lot of, like, ‘So, not Velma?’ Those kinds of tweets,” she said. “‘Not the classic Velma that I’m always thinking about!'”

Kaling admitted that she was surprised the character “elicited such strong reactions in either direction,” with Meyers tacking on that Velma was frequently a forgotten character and might be surprised herself to find so many people cared.

The Mindy Project star responded by questioning why someone couldn’t envision Velma “a great character” that’s “so smart” as Indian. “I just couldn’t understand how people couldn’t imagine a really smart, nerdy girl with terrible eyesight, and who loved to solve mysteries, could be Indian,” Kaling said. “Like, there are Indian nerds. It shouldn’t be a surprise to people.”

While Kaling admitted that it was only “a small percentage of people” she saw responding negatively, it ultimately gave her pause. “It really made me think, OK, we’ve got to be really careful with this character,” she said, “which we will be because we really love her.”

Kaling’s appearance on the late night show was actually tied to her voice role on another animated project, the Disney+ series Monsters at Work. But while in the process of discussing her excitement around playing monster Val Little on the series, Kaling ended up in a different conversation about representation after misremembering the gender representation in the first Monsters Inc. film.

Kaling began by expressing that she loved the movie and was obsessed with it before mistakenly saying there were no women characters in the original movie. “There [were] no female characters in the first one — wait, no, that’s not true,” Kaling quickly corrected herself.”

Meyers joked that the writer-producer had “opened with a lie,” before Kaling said that she just “instantly thought of two characters” and eventually three. The Monsters at Work star then admitted that maybe “it’s not that exciting that I’m on the show,” before questioning why she had started to make that statement.

“Why would a person come on a show with a fact that’s not correct?” Kaling asked. “You know what it was? I wanted to come in and make a statement. Yeah, I wanted to be like, ‘I’m breaking barriers with the show.’ I was like, ‘I’m the first woman of color that’s ever been in animated TV.’ And it’s a lie.”

“As a woman of color, it’s so important to take roles where you’re multiple colors,” she said of her animated character, continuing to run with her joke. “You produce The Amber Ruffin Show, you know exactly what it is.”

Kaling then congratulated Meyers on the Peacock show, to which he responded with his own representation joke. “Thank you. I’m the first white male producer,” the Late Night host said to laughs.