Mindy Kaling Explains How She’s Turned Into ‘The Office’s’ Michael Scott

Mindy Kaling admitted Friday that there was an episode of The Office that she wrote but didn’t really get—until now.

Kaling made the reveal during her appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show on Friday, where she discussed the episode in which Steve Carell’s Michael Scott explains his reason for wanting kids. The 45-year-old mom of three now says she can very much relate to the line.

Kaling played Kelly Kapoor on The Office and was also a writer on the show from 2005 to 2013.

“There’s this character named Michael Scott, and when he was a little boy, we did this thing where he was on a child TV show,” Kaling, who played Kelly Kapoor on The Office and was also a writer on the show from 2005 to 2013, explained to Barrymore. “And they ask him, ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’ And he says, ‘I want to have 100 kids so I can have 100 friends and no one can say no to being my friend.’”

Kaling said that she had no idea she would one day relate to the character at the time, but now, she told Barrymore, “I am Michael Scott!”

“I wrote that episode and I remember at the time I was 25 and I was so far from having kids,” she said. “And I thought, ‘That’s so funny and sad that a grown up would want to have kids to have friends—and then, now, cut to me being like, ‘I have two daughters and I can’t wait until they get older so they can be my pals.’”

Kaling has a daughter named Katherine who’s six and a son named Spencer, who’s four years old. She surprised the public when she revealed she’d welcomed a second daughter named Anne in February this year, but has still never revealed the father of her three children.

For more, listen to Mindy Kaling on The Last Laugh podcast.