SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about the two-part Season 1 finale of Hulu’s Not Suitable For Work.
Mindy Kaling‘s Not Suitable For Work wrapped its nine-episode first season with a two-episode finale set over Christmas and New Year’s Eve. For the professionally driven quintet of 20-somethings at its center, It brought career wins for Josh (Jack Martin), Abby (Avantika) and Kel (Nicholas Duvernay), a setback for Davis (Will Angus) and a question mark for AJ (Ella Hunt). The finale also introduced a new couple in AJ and Davis and another one in the making as Kel made a move on his theater co-worker, developments that left Josh and Abby disappointed.
Below, Kaling breaks down the main developments in the finale: the cliffhangers for each of the main characters, the future of Jay Ellis’ Bill after he broke up with AJ and got into a brawl with Davis, could we see Ego Nwodim again after her Kate fired Kel from his teaching job just as his acting career took off, and if there is an Austin (Harry Richardson) redemption arc coming?
Kaling, who started on The Office before creating and starring in The Mindy Project, also has Netflix’s Running Point. She provides a status update on Season 2 of Not Suitable For Work and shares her hopes for renewal as the ensemble comedy has not been a big breakout but has done respectable business attracting viewers and creating buzz.
DEADLINE: We may have just ushered in the summer but the Not Suitable For Work finale rang in the new year while also celebrating Christmas. Was the timing intentional or was it part of a plan to release the season during the holidays?
KALING: When I moved from network TV to streaming, I gave up on ever being able to have the seasons line up to holidays in any of my shows, and for a while it made me want to avoid doing them, because I thought the dissonance would be so weird. But then I saw it on other streaming shows and I thought it was fine, like I’d be watching a Christmas episode in August, and I felt like it was okay.
Obviously, growing up and watching a Christmas episode of Friends or a holiday episode for Cheers, or even The Office, our Christmas episodes, of which I wrote plenty, having it lined up to the time of year was always so cozy, it’s a nice feeling, but it’s just not really the world we live in. I don’t think I actually remember of any of my streaming shows where the timing of the show has lined up to when it’s actually aired.
I think more than half of my shows have been summer shows, but I’m from the East Coast, and I’ve written so many Christmas episodes between The Mindy Project, when it was still on network, and The Office, that I refuse to not have holiday episodes, particularly Christmas and Thanksgiving in New York.
This is my third show that starts in September. Never Have I Ever, College Girls and this show, they start in September. I don’t know why, it probably comes from some rooted feeling of being in elementary school and thinking that the year starts in September. People are starting new jobs, so the show starts the first week of September and it ends on New Year’s Eve.
The finale included an ABC New Year’s Eve live show listing Labubus among hot topics of conversation, which would make sense if this was New Year’s Eve 2025. It is not.
KALING: We should just assume it was this year, 2026. Whenever I’m making shows, I always want them to be, unless expressly said otherwise in the pilot, they’re all taking place now.
DEADLINE: Can you address online criticism that some references on the show, like Labubus and One Direction, feel a little outdated?
KALING: We honestly wrote things that we just thought were funny, and when they air is a little bit out of our hands.
DEADLINE: What about Josh’s dad making a call to Bob Iger, who stepped down as CEO of ABC parent Disney in March, to get Wes (Victor Garber) on the New Year’s Eve show?
KALING: I think he would be universally considered very powerful still even if his job title has shifted in the past six months. I think the references in the show aren’t there because we’re trying to win a race against TikTok, it’s there because it’s trying to tell you something about the characters, and I think that it’s an impossible game because it’s so subjective, the references, but I do think they are kind of fun.
DEADLINE: Season 1 has done relatively well, becoming a fixture in Hulu’s Daily Top 10. Are you hopeful about a renewal and what is the current status of a potential second season, have you started a writers room?
KALING: Our writers room has been up for Season 2, which is wonderful. Of course, the big question is whether we’ll get an official pickup for production, I keep my fingers crossed. I love the show so much, I’m so glad that it’s doing well. One of the things that has made me so happy is how much the cast loves the show, and the writing staff loves the show, and the way that the cast expresses their love through all the social content that they’ve been doing.
It’s not like anyone’s getting paid to make TikTok videos for the show, and yet they are doing it and doing so much to promote it, and as a creator, that’s all you can ask for. I love the show so much, so I’d love to keep making it for years and years, and yes, I’m right now just keeping my fingers crossed.
Jay Ellis’ charismatic Bill who’d charmed AJ (and all of us), revealed a different side in the finale when he first lied to AJ about a work thing only for her to find out that he was taking his ex to Aspen instead, and then he broke up with her on the steps of his New York apartment. To top that off, he fired Davis after Davis defends AJ and the two get into a scuffle in the office.
KALING: I’ve worked with Jay twice in the past three years in very different characters, once was on Running Point, where he plays the former coach of the Waves and a love interest for Kate Hudson’s character, and then this role where the tone of the character is very different, and with him, that’s the fun of it.
We all know that Jay is good looking, but I think what he does extraordinarily well is he understands that confidence and vulnerability are not opposites. I think he could be incredibly charismatic, like the character of Bill, he is the managing director at one of the biggest firms in New York. What I love about him in the last two episodes is that you see uncertainty underneath, and obviously we’ve seen him be charismatic on Issa Rae’s show Insecure, which was incredible, but I love when we can see uncertainty in his regrets at the end.
And what I really love about his character and AJ’s character is that they are so similar, but what we learn is that similar doesn’t mean compatible, so I really love that about the way that their story ends. Chemistry is easy, but compatibility is the hard part. They have great chemistry, but he, as the older person, the more mature person, sees that they will not be compatible long term, which I thought felt really real.
DEADLINE: What about setting Bill and AJ’s breakup scene on iconic New York stoops, straight out of a romantic movie?
KALING: I wouldn’t shoot a show in New York, do all of the work of moving my life out there to shoot the show if we’re not going to take advantage of things that are incredibly aspirational to New York City, even to me, and I’ve lived in New York.
Being able to shoot in Tribeca in the snow and show someone standing vulnerably at the doorstep of someone who’s dumped them to ask for answers in the snow, it’s like all the kind of things you can’t do in L.A., and I’ve tried. The Mindy Project, we shot L.A. for New York because I think at that time, we couldn’t have afforded to have gone to New York though I may have wanted to.
This was a different experience, and that’s why we decided to do that. Throughout the whole series, we shot at Union Square, Katz’s Deli, Central Park. I kept saying, I have three little kids, it is not easy for me to have to come and shoot here but we’re going to make the show so steeped in New York and have young people feel about the show the way that I felt about all the different movies and TV shows that were set in New York City that made me want to live there.
DEADLINE: You mentioned Jay’s recurring role on Netflix’s Running Point, whose Season 2 finale set his character up for even bigger presents in S3, and he has a full-time job as the star of ABC’s Rookie: North. Is he done with NSFW, was he contracted for a season-long arc that is now over?
KALING: It’s clear that I’m very fond of working with Jay. He’s so fun, the cast loves him and so do the writers. So, even though the door has really shut on their relationship in this season, I’d like it to mimic real life, which is no one’s ever really out of our lives when we break up. For very small, lucky few, they are, but we still have so many cliffhangers at the end of the episode: he’s gotten into a physical altercation at work, what is AJ’s work situation going to be, she still has to work with him next year at the end of this season. We love working with him, so it would be wonderful to see him again next season.
The finale shook things up for most of the lead characters, with Davis fired, a question whether AJ would quit in solidarity (Kaling already hinted she was staying), Kel losing his teaching job, and Abby going back to her old boss Vanessa (Constance Wu). And then there is a string of new romantic entanglements.
KALING: It’s funny, when I started the season — and this doesn’t always happen, actually, it almost never happens — but when I started this season, before I even hired writers, I knew this final image, which is I really wanted on New Year’s Eve for the Josh character to be coming to hang out with AJ, and to see her kissing his best friend, and on his face, seeing that it’s clear disappointment that he feels, but then also wondering why he feels disappointment.
I pictured that in my head, I knew I wanted to end up the season on New Year’s Eve, which feels cinematic. It’s hardly original in terms of a setting for romantic comedies, but I love the idea of doing something on New Year’s. We don’t get to do that kind of cinematic cold city New Year’s when we do our L.A. shows, so I wanted to do that.
The biggest question will be, what does that mean for Davis and for AJ? I thought, one of Will’s best scenes — he such a goofy character — was when he admits to her his feelings for her. It’s just a dramatic scene, I don’t think there’s any jokes in that whole scene. I liked to give him that moment, that was one of the only moments where he was really real in himself about stripped away all of his anxiety and his goofiness. And when she sees that side of him, it’s so attractive, she can’t help but kiss him.
I think for us it’s like, okay, well, what happens now? How long can Davis stay that way, that version of himself? Will AJ regret it in the morning? And what Josh’s feelings are about this? Is he happy for his friend? Is he jealous of his friend? And where does Kel fall in between. That’s the romantic thing.
One of the best things about the season for me — and it was a real surprise, because we had no idea before we shot the scenes — was how those scenes would work with Kel working at the girls school, and they ended up being some of my favorite beats. I absolutely love him with those teenage girls, I think it’s incredibly endearing.
What I wanted at the end of the season is for people to grieve this idea that he wouldn’t be a teacher anymore, because my hope is that people will see that Kel is even thinking, well, do I miss this, do I like it more than I thought I would, even though I have everything I want, which is to be in a Jeremy O. Harris play on Broadway.
DEADLINE: With Abby and Kel, we seems to have another romcom staple — bad timing. When he was into her, she saw him as a friend and was flirting with Austin, now she’s into him after their moment on the dance floor at the school formal but he is interested in his co-worker. Will they continue to be star-crossed lovers?
KALING: I think you nailed it, which is timing. I think that Abby is a character with a lot of ego, and I think for her to be vulnerable with Kel took a lot, and for him to not care/not understand that she was putting herself out there is devastating for her.
So I think that coming up next season, should we get another season, it will be fun for Kel to realize that that’s why she was there, and that he might have blown his opportunity. But also Kel will have other opportunities now, he has a real job, a cool job in New York, and he has clout. He’s obviously really good looking and smart, so he will have other opportunities himself as will Abby.
Their chemistry in particular between Kel and Abby, or Avantika and Nicholas, was a big surprise. You cast these things, and Nicholas was cast late, we didn’t even get to do a chemistry read with him and Avantika, and when they came on set — obviously they are two of the best looking people I think I’ve ever seen — but still, as we all know, that doesn’t necessarily mean there’d be chemistry. But I was so happy, and one of the most romantic parts of the show is their ongoing dynamic with each other.
DEADLINE: Josh and AJ, it seems like you set them up from the beginning as endgame. Is that the case, and are you just creating obstacles for them until then? Do you have the final scene of the whole series in mind the way you had the one for the Season 1 finale?
KALING: Oh my gosh, Nellie, I’m not that formulaic. I understand why you think that Josh and AJ are endgame. Even though I love romance, and I love a happy ending, I’d like to think that — even though I’ve been working and doing this for a long time — that I can still surprise audiences.
Audiences understandably want to know who ends up together, and now they’re so sophisticated that’s based on former things that I’ve done. I would like to say that there are surprises down the road. What you’re saying, I totally understand, and I want to honor your expectation of what will happen, but I will say that I think there will be some major surprises and upsets from what your predictions are.
DEADLINE: Do we know for sure that Davis doesn’t have a job anymore? He will stay in New York regardless, right? Because there was some talk among the guys about moving to Colorado.
KALING: I think when they were talking about Colorado, they were talking in a wistful, hypothetical way as opposed to actually moving to Colorado. It’s not that I’m averse to any of those big moves, but yeah, the big question at the end of the season is whether Davis will continue to work there since he got into a physical alteration at work, and he was literally fired by Bill.
But it’s the holidays, and maybe after the holidays cooler heads will prevail, but maybe they won’t, we’ll see. It’s definitely very funny thinking of someone like Davis, so much of his identity is being an investment banker. So I think it’s very fun as writers to think like, okay, well, what would his life be if he wasn’t a banker? I can’t say one way or the other whether that happens, but those things are things that we’re thinking about.
DEADLINE: Kel didn’t get to enjoy his acting break fully because his parents didn’t show up, they still can’t seem to forgive him from dropping out of medical school. Will they ever accept his choice?
KALING: I wanted there to be a little bit of heartbreak for him at the end when his parents didn’t come to see his play. That comes from a very real place for me, which is, I so relate to this idea of having immigrant parents with a lot of expectations on you. It’s a lot to quit medical school and lie about it, one of the most prestigious medical schools, to become an actor. I’m not an immigrant, but even I can’t say that I’d be happy if my kids did that.
We wanted to do something that felt real, and that gave us some place to go next season with him and his parents: is there going to be some reconciliation, and how will Kel feel about that? I certainly hope so, but we know that they still have a road ahead of them.
DEADLINE: As Abby and Kel shared that moment at the school formal, the camera cut to Kate looking at them in anguish with tears in her eyes. It was a beautiful scene of quiet heartbreak as Kate clearly had ulterior motives for hiring Kel; she fired him immediately after. Ego Nwodim has been great on the show, coming off SNL; will we see her again next season?
KALING: I am so glad you mentioned that, because I absolutely love Ego as well. “Lisa from Temecula” on SNL was so funny to me. She’s clearly so funny but what was so great about working with her on the show is, that character is a guest star, but when we had her have this moment of getting her heart broken and we get to see this, she was so good in that, I was just so impressed by her as someone who I knew pretty much from comedy.
I loved working with her, I loved hanging out with her. She’s incredibly busy, but it was so great that she was able to do that, and I would for sure have her again next season, because she’s really adorable on the show. Thank you for for liking that scene, I love that too. I like that in the show characters can get together, but there’s still casualties from that, like two characters can grow closer, but other people’s feelings will get hurt. I love that scene, and how she played that heartbreak.
DEADLINE: We got a “crossover” we didn’t know we needed — Australian actor Harry Richardson from The Gilded Age (as well as Poldarck and other British shows) recurring as Vanessa’s movie star client client Austin Blanchett. His arc was closed out but he is due to make amends. How did you cast Harry and could we see him again?
KALING: I am such a huge fan of The Gilded Age, there’s a handful of writers on my staff that are also just obsessed with it, and Bernie Telsey, our casting director, also does The Gilded Age. When we would do casting sessions, I would just be talking to him, never really thinking there would necessarily be an overlap. But this is another benefit of us shooting in New York and using Bernie, is that when we were looking for actors, he was like, oh, what about Harry Richardson?
I was already a fan of Harry’s, but what I love about him is he has this kind of old-fashioned movie star quality, which is why he’s so good on Gilded Age, but he’s very modern as an actor. He’s obviously been in a lot of really successful BBC shows, but it was really fun for us to be able to use him in a comedy and play this modern character.
Also, we had written the character — and nobody believes me — we had written the character of Austin Blanchett as being the nephew of Cate Blanchett before we cast Harry, who is Australian. That was just a complete stroke of luck.
DEADLINE: Could there be a redemption arc for Austin because he turned out to be a prick at the end, firing Abby?
KALING: Yeah, Harry’s character Austin is not someone that we find out is a great guy this season, but I love working with him, so I wouldn’t rule anything out.
DEADLINE: The young cast of Not Suitable For Work is mostly unknown. You have surrounded them with veterans like Victor Garber, Greg Germann, Judy Gold, Constance Wu. Are you also planning to continue bringing flashy big stars like Jay Ellis and Ego Nwodim for arcs every season?
KALING: I love the cast in this. I’ve worked with all varying levels of fame for my actors. I’ve done shows with relatively unknown actors before, and then obviously Kate Hudson in Running Point, so I’ve worked in lots of different ways.
This has been really fun, because the cast has all worked a lot, none of them are green. Jack Martin was on La Brea, obviously Avantika was in Mean Girls and has had done lots of TV and movies before, but they all still have this really exciting, emerging quality. Will Angus was in a very successful sketch troupe, but he hadn’t been on as much TV and film, so what I loved about it was people who had the chops, but they hadn’t had the platform yet.
It’s always really exciting as a creator if you can seem like you’re discovering people before everyone else discovers them, but then I also love mixing those types of actors in with people like Victor Garber, Greg Germann, Judy Gold, Constance Wu, who is so funny. I loved her in Fresh Off the Boat, and I love having her — she has this natural warmth — having her be this very brusque character.
That again is a New York thing. We weren’t going to get Victor and Ego and Constance who are all East Coast-based actors. I just love mixing these people that are so well known and so seasoned with new faces, that is really fun. I could see doing that for the rest of my career.
DEADLINE: With Vanessa back in the picture in a big way as she rehired Abby in the finale, could Constance Wu get promoted to series regular in Season 2? You clearly like her on the show.
KALING: One of the nice surprises of the show was at how tight Constance and Avantika became. Constance is exactly the kind of actor who makes you want to write more for her. She’s so funny, and especially playing this character, Vanessa, she has this ability to walk into a scene and raise the stakes. So, yeah, I would write for her as long as I possibly could. Getting an actor of Constance’s caliber, I’d be looking for opportunities to work with her on another show if she wasn’t on this one, so yes.
DEADLINE: One the last thing. Thank you for spotlighting through Josh’s experience how little journalism jobs pay.
KALING: Well, you’re welcome. I guess. People always say that my shows are aspirational, but I don’t think that they’re unrealistic.
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