Mindy Kaling Isn’t Done Telling Personal Stories As ‘NSFW’ Wraps Trilogy: Starring Comedy Vehicle, Drama & ‘Golden Girls’ Take On Her To-Do List

Mindy Kaling, whose TV shows have been dubbed by fans the Mindy Comedy Universe, loves being behind “the slightly less famous MCU” and sharing an acronym with Marvel.

Her latest series, Not Suitable For Work, which wraps its first season on Hulu today (Read Deadline’s postmortem interview with Kaling here), was designed as a third in a trilogy. The ensemble comedy, about five work-obsessed twenty-somethings striving for professional success in New York, explores the next stage in young people’s lives after high school, which Kaling chronicled in her hit Netflix comedy Never Have I Ever, and college, the setting of her HBO Max series The Sex Lives of College Girls.

The three shows and Kaling’s Fox/Hulu comedy The Mindy Project collectively tell stories of girls and young women through their teens, twenties and thirties — from high school to career success. Is Kaling done mirroring her life or are there still blank periods that she can mine for future shows?

“Are you suggesting that I can retire after this because I’ve hit every age that people go through?,” she asked, tongue-in-cheek, during a Deadline interview about the NSFW finale. “I have talked about the show as being the third in this trilogy; Never Have I Ever was my teenage years, Sex as a College Girls was obviously college, and now this is when you graduate and you move to the city of your dreams. I also like talking about my own work as trilogies, because I think it seems pretentious and smart.”

Not Suitable For Work is the second series solely created by Kaling after The Mindy Project, which also marked her first time on her own after her breakout run on The Office. Kaling was 25 when she joined The Office and in her early 30s when she launched The Mindy Project.

“When I look back at my time at The Mindy Project, it was a blur, because I would wake up so early, get into hair and make up at six in the morning and leave at 10pm. But the time in my life from 21 to 24 I remember incredibly vividly, and so I feel like I’ve had enough time that’s passed where I could write about that time,” Kaling said about the period in her life she is chronicling on Not Suitable For Work.

The Mindy Project is also the only series created by Kaling so far in which she has starred. That may change as Kaling shared what she wants to work on next while juggling her Netflix series Running Point starring Kate Hudson, recently renewed for a third season, and Not Suitable For Work, which Kaling hopes gets renewed for a second. (Here, she shares the story behind NSFW‘s title and addresses the show’s Friends comparisons.)

“I’m still working on Running Point Season 3, that’s what I’m doing simultaneously now, but I would love to act in something about the experience of being in your 40s, being a single woman in Los Angeles, and finding happiness, potentially romance. That feels interesting to me right now,” Kaling said.

There are more possibilities ahead for Kaling, who is still in her mid-40s. There are current examples — for instance, Tina Fey is tackling 50-somethings’ lives and relationships in her Netflix comedy series The Four Seasons.

“I want to do that, and I want to do my version of Golden Girls,” emphasizing that it would be her original take, “not a remake of Golden Girls.” Beyond that, “I’d also like to write a drama,” said Kaling whose work to date has been in comedy.

“So there’s a lot of stories left in me, but right now, between these two [Running Point and NSFW], I think this is all I have time to think about,” Kaling said.