Mindy Kaling has been facing backlash after admitting that she non-consensually kissed a costar and threatened to fire her employees if they told anyone.
Following the success of The Office - which ran from 2005 to 2013 - the 43-year-old comedian landed her 2012 self-titled comedy series: The Mindy Project.
In the show which ended in 2017, Kaling plays Mindy Lahiri - an obstetrician and gynecologist - who is trying to find a romantic partner in New York.
This means that she has worked alongside attractive guest stars and one of them was actor Lee Pace - who starred as Alexander "Xander" Eakin in Season 3.
One of Lee's scenes is a flashback to the pair in bed together after having sex, but, there was zero intimacy between the two as they were talking about tech-obsessed Xander's recently created website
However, it has been disclosed that not every take was filmed that way as in a resurfaced interview on the late-night show Conan in 2016, Kaling admitted that she included an unscripted kiss during filming.
Watch Kaling talk about the unscripted kiss below:In the clip, the Never Have I Ever creator was asked by the host: "Do you ever feel like having that much power on your show has led to you being unprofessional? Because power can corrupt."
She then replied: "We had this one actor on the show named Lee Pace…A real gentleman. He came on the show and we had to do this flashback sequence where we were in bed together in college and we’re just supposed to be having a conversation."
"But he’s so tall and he’s so handsome that in the middle of that, he was just supposed to be like, 'What do you think, Mindy?' and I was like-" she said, imitating kissing him.
"I improvised just kissing him in the scene, which was not in the script," Kaling said with a laugh. "He was looming above me and he asked me a question and I was not listening to him at all, because who cares what he was saying? I was like mhm, mhm, mwah."
The actress described The Fall actor as looking stunned before she went backstage, to which her two writers told her "You could be sued for that!" therefore she declared: "'Tell anyone and you’re fired.'"
While Kaling and the 59-year-old host laughed about the strange moment, many people criticized Kaling for admitting to sexually assaulting a costar at work.
One user said: "Wow. Mindy Kaling openly bragging about sexually harassing co-workers and using her position to threaten people with their jobs. That's messed up. Just because it was improvised doesn't make it okay."
Another user commented: "Never in my days would I have thought I would see people having a conversation and laughing about assaulting someone on live television."
A third person shared: "Admitting to sexual harassment and blackmail live on television. Holy c**p."
A fourth added: "Intimacy scenes are one thing you don't improvise ever (unless you and your co-actor establish it's okay which is only really possible when you know each other very well). This is why we have intimacy coordinators. This kind of behavior is unacceptable and the way it's talked about in this context is sick."
The criticism comes after the Velma creator came under fire when she said The Office would be canceled today due to its "inappropriate" jokes.
Kaling played Kelly Kapoor in 157 episodes of the US sitcom and opened up to Good Morning America about how she believes the show wouldn't survive in today's world.
"I kind of think maybe never," Kaling said. "That show was so inappropriate. We always talk about - the writers I’m still in touch with - we talk about how so much of that show we probably couldn’t make now."
"Tastes have changed and honestly what offends people has changed so much now," she added, before saying the taboo nature of the series is why she believes it is so popular to this day.
