Mindy Kaling Gives an Update on ‘Sex Lives of College Girls,’ ‘Never Have I Ever’ Amid LA’s COVID Production Pause (Exclusive)

Amid a Hollywood-wide production halt due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, HBO Max‘s The Sex Lives of College Girls is on track begin filming in “a couple of weeks,” Mindy Kaling confirmed to PopCulture.com in a recent interview. The series, which stars Pauline Chalamet, Amrit Kaur, Reneé Rapp and Alyah Chanelle Scott in a comedy revolving around four roommates at Essex College, has yet to announce an official premiere date. Still, Kaling assured that with proper safety procedures in place, the show’s filming would be underway soon.

“We’re going to start shooting that in a couple of weeks,” she told PopCulture. “Which if you live in California, people are like, are you serious? And it’s like, yeah, I guess it’s moving forward and we have a way to shoot it safely.” Sex Lives of College Girls was picked up for a 13-episode run by the streaming service in October 2019 and is co-written by Justin Noble, also serving as showrunner.

In the pipeline for Kaling, who welcomed son Spencer in September, is Season 2 of Never Have I Ever, her childhood-inspired Netflix dramedy telling the coming of age story of a first-generation Indian-American teenager girl, played by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan. Never Have I Ever‘s the second season should also resume production in “about a month,” Kaling shared, as the holiday break was extended for “COVID-related issues.” She added hopefully, “But the cast is healthy and happy, so we should be starting that up in about a month or something … and I’ve been editing those first five episodes, and they’re great.”

Producing two series in a pandemic world has definitely been a challenge, the actress admitted, but drawing on some familiar faces has eased a bit of the burden. “Honestly, I feel really lucky because the team that we have assembled for both of those shows are kind of a hybrid of people I knew from The Office and The Mindy Project,” she explained. “And what’s great about that is I have people, editors that I’ve worked with for on a bunch of different shows, so we have such a shorthand … and technology has been so great so that we can be watching a cut and be Zooming together and talking through a cut at the same time.”

Kaling’s work environment changing with the times has been a blessing in disguise, especially when balancing life at home with her two kids. “I think I used to have this old school feeling that … you had to leave at two o’clock in the morning because that’s that kind of old school comedy writer thing, where it’s not good unless you stay until two in the morning,” she reflected. “Now we learned that none of us can go to work, so we’ve been so much more efficient doing it, and I feel like I have the right teams in place that we can do it really well.”

Partnering with Campbell’s Well Yes! soups, Kaling said while sipping on the Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato flavor that she’s been grateful to have a “nutritious, incredibly convenient, delicious” meal at hand for her or her 3-year-old daughter Katherine as they navigate the realities of today’s work from home balance. “I have little things like I’ll take like a midday walk with my children, and I’ll bring with me my Well Yes! soup,” she told PopCulture. “And I’ll be able to eat and hang out with them, and I never used to be able to do that, so it’s been great.”