Mindy Kaling’s Guide to Hyperpigmentation and a ‘Sneaky Beat’

Vogue

Kaling’s go-to skin-care and glam for a dinner date with friends.   Director: Gabrielle Reich DP: Matt Krueger Editors: Tajah Smith, Michael Suyeda  Associate Producer: Lea Donenberg Production Manager: Kit Fogarty Production Coordinator: Ava Kashar Associate Talent Manager: Phoebe Feinberg  Post Production Supervisor: Edward Taylor Post Production Coordinator: Jovan James Supervising Editor: Kameron Key Assistant Editor: Courtney Karwal Filmed at: 1 Hotel West Hollywood

Transcript

00:00 (upbeat music)

00:02 Hey, what's up?

00:05 It's Mindy Kaling,

00:06 and I'm gonna take you through my skincare

00:08 and my makeup routine.

00:09 My vision for my look tonight is kind of a sneaky beat.

00:13 You know, it's a dinner out with some of my girlfriends,

00:16 but I don't want them to leave thinking like,

00:18 "Whoa, she was wearing a lot of makeup."

00:19 More like, "Whoa, she has great skin."

00:21 When I was a kid, I did not understand the toner step

00:23 in makeup, and now that I'm an adult with oily skin,

00:25 it's such a necessity.

00:27 I love this La Mer oil-absorbing tonic.

00:30 It just sort of like sucks out all the oil.

00:33 My next step is my Lion Pose Unspotted 4X Serum.

00:39 This is for my hyperpigmentation.

00:41 Like, I have this little crop of marks

00:43 that I got from old zits.

00:44 I usually use it at nighttime,

00:46 but I really wanna get rid of these,

00:48 and then this guy over here,

00:49 so I'm gonna do it during the day,

00:50 and I'm gonna pair it with sunscreen, of course.

00:53 My next step is this Charmeless Under Face Butter,

00:56 which is a moisturizer.

00:57 With a name like face butter,

00:58 it feels like it's gonna be really thick and oily,

01:01 but it isn't.

01:02 It's just really good at keeping a glow on my face,

01:04 and then also, makeup looks really good over it.

01:07 When I was younger,

01:10 I remember my mom would do Clinique Three Step,

01:13 and I thought, "Three steps?

01:14 "That's so many steps for skincare,"

01:16 and now I do like 17 steps,

01:18 and I look back at that and laugh.

01:20 This next step, which is really fun,

01:21 is these Aquaphor Repairing Hand Masks.

01:23 When I was a kid watching sitcoms,

01:25 I would always wonder why the sitcom moms

01:27 would be getting into bed,

01:28 putting moisturizer on their hands.

01:30 I was like, "Why are their hands so dry all the time?"

01:32 And now, I'm literally that woman

01:34 who has dry hands who's doing that,

01:36 and so what I love about these Aquaphor Hand Masks

01:39 is that they're moisturizing for your hands,

01:41 'cause hands age.

01:42 Didn't know that.

01:43 They're like clown hands,

01:46 but I swear they're so good for your skin,

01:48 and then you can just tape 'em shut.

01:49 So while I have my Mickey Mouse hands on,

01:51 I'm going to use my face roller.

01:53 This one is Angela Caglia.

01:55 It's rose quartz, and it just feels like

01:58 I'm just a fancy Beverly Hills lady who does this all day.

02:01 The truth is I don't do this that often,

02:02 but it's nice and cold,

02:03 and I think it gets rid of some puffiness.

02:05 I definitely have less time than I used to

02:08 now that I have kids,

02:09 but I spend more time on this stuff now,

02:12 maybe because anti-aging is important to me

02:15 or just 'cause it feels like a nice way to unwind.

02:17 A big part of my self-care routine is working out.

02:20 I just feel like it's really cathartic,

02:23 both physically and mentally,

02:25 and if I can start my day with a workout,

02:27 I'm just in a better mood.

02:28 These can come off now.

02:29 My next step is sunscreen.

02:31 I love the Supergoop Unseen Sunscreen.

02:33 I feel like I knew that I was supposed to wear sunscreen

02:39 for the past 20 years,

02:40 but I've only actually implemented it

02:42 for the past six years.

02:43 Don't tell my dermatologist.

02:44 All right, so let's get into our sneaky beat.

02:46 The first thing I'm gonna use is this Hourglass concealer.

02:49 I'm gonna just do little dots.

02:51 I kinda learned how to do my makeup from my mom.

02:55 You know, my mom was an immigrant,

02:57 and I think when she came to this country,

02:59 she kinda felt like people treated her better

03:01 if she was more put together,

03:02 so makeup, being dressed up, was really empowering to her,

03:07 and she really instilled that in me

03:08 and said that that's really important.

03:09 All right, so now I'm gonna put on my foundation.

03:11 I love this Sisley foundation.

03:13 It's so light.

03:14 It almost feels more like a tinted moisturizer.

03:18 The cast on my shows are so diverse

03:20 that it's so important that we have makeup artists

03:22 and hairstylists who know how to do a range of skin tones.

03:26 It's really important to me with the products I'm using

03:28 to try to use as many women of color as possible.

03:30 My next step is this Dr. Laura Dampkin lip plump.

03:34 Sometimes when I hear about lip plump,

03:37 I'm like, I don't wanna look like crazy or anything,

03:39 but this stuff is so good.

03:40 It just gives you the best version of your lips.

03:42 All right, powder time.

03:44 This is such an important step for me.

03:45 I'm obsessed with this powder by Amikole.

03:48 I have such oily skin

03:49 that I start getting shiny almost instantly.

03:52 I always get so excited for the Met and kind of nervous,

04:02 and this year I did a pretty stupid thing,

04:04 which was I wanted my skin to look perfect,

04:06 so I started using retinol for the first time

04:09 the month before the Met,

04:11 and my skin all peeled off, and I got breakouts.

04:15 It was terrible.

04:16 Never start something you've never done

04:18 right before a big event.

04:19 Jonathan Simkaya, who's this incredibly chic designer

04:22 who designed my gorgeous gown,

04:24 came over and was like, "What's on your face?"

04:26 And it was just a one-inch thick layer of Aquaphor

04:29 to just calm my skin down.

04:30 So I don't recommend starting a new product

04:32 before you get married or go to the Met.

04:33 So brows stress me out.

04:35 I know how important they are for the face,

04:37 and when I see someone with amazing brows,

04:39 I'm like, oh my God, Lily Collins brows.

04:41 And so I got this really helpful kit.

04:43 I love this.

04:44 I just dab a little bit on there, and...

04:46 Strong brow.

04:51 Too strong?

04:52 You know what?

04:53 I'm gonna own it.

04:54 So when I was a kid, I was always doing

04:57 the bright purple, blue, Urban Decay awesome shadows,

05:00 and I absolutely love them.

05:01 But as I've gotten older,

05:02 I just don't know how to apply it right.

05:04 I feel like if I was a professional makeup artist,

05:06 I'd do it better, so I stick to more of these neutral tones,

05:08 which I love.

05:09 So I'm gonna do a cream shadow.

05:13 I love a cream shadow,

05:15 'cause you can kind of just like smear it around.

05:18 I just like to hit it a little bit

05:21 with this Troye Sivan shadow.

05:24 It's liner time, and liner is by far

05:27 the most stressful step of the makeup process.

05:30 I can't tell you how many times I try to do a cat eye

05:33 that turns into a smoky eye because I messed it up.

05:36 And today might be one of those days.

05:38 We will find out.

05:39 My favorite liner, though, is this Rare Beauty one.

05:41 Selena, you nailed it on the liners.

05:44 And I like Only Murders in the building, too.

05:46 So two for two.

05:48 So my strategy with liner is just to do

05:49 like a little at a time.

05:51 I am such an impatient person,

05:53 but this is a time where I really have to take it slow.

05:57 I saw on TikTok that the way you do a cat eye

06:01 is you do a line that goes up to meet the end of your brow.

06:05 We're gonna try that.

06:10 It's fine.

06:12 I'm not going to like a movie premiere.

06:14 Then I hit my lower waterline with this Pat McGrath pencil.

06:17 This is weird.

06:18 I like to use a pencil for under eye

06:19 and look up for the top eye.

06:21 My favorite, mascara.

06:25 This brush is nice and thin,

06:28 so it can get into all the little crevices of your eye.

06:32 I have a little trick where I count to 50.

06:35 I do 50 wand spreads per eye.

06:38 One, two, three, four, five,

06:41 and 50.

06:44 I don't know.

06:45 I think that's a good amount.

06:46 Steal that trick if you like it.

06:47 I love blush.

06:50 I think it looks so pretty,

06:52 even if it's the only makeup that I'm wearing.

06:54 So I layer on two of these Rare Beauty liquid blushes.

06:57 One of my favorite makeup looks for any character

07:03 was Kelly Kapoor.

07:04 She would wear such thick purple eyeshadow.

07:08 Kelly was always so funny,

07:12 'cause I'm like, "Why are you wearing purple eyeshadow?

07:14 "You work at a paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania."

07:17 But she loved it, and she got Ryan, so it all worked out.

07:22 I think with my characters,

07:23 I always like them to be more dramatic than me,

07:25 'cause I don't get to do that in real life.

07:26 So with Kelly Kapoor with her makeup,

07:28 or with Mindy Lahiri and all of her mixed prints and colors,

07:31 I think it's really fun to play those kind of characters.

07:33 I have come a long way with makeup.

07:34 When I was going to the 40-year-old virgin premiere,

07:36 I got my makeup done at the MAC counter on Robertson.

07:39 I don't even know if it's still there.

07:40 With all the other things I had to care about

07:42 in my beauty routine, I don't think about lips that much,

07:44 but when I was on "Ocean's 8,"

07:45 Cate Blanchett gave the entire cast

07:48 this electronic lip scrubber.

07:50 It looked a little bit like a sex toy,

07:52 but it was a lip scrubber, and you push the bottom of it,

07:54 and it just exfoliated your lips.

07:57 And she was the one that taught me about lip care.

07:59 So that's why I use this Laura Duggan lip plumber,

08:03 and I still have that lip scrubber.

08:05 It's so good.

08:06 Thank you, Cate Blanchett.

08:07 It's lip liner time.

08:09 Love the Charlotte Tilbury lip liner.

08:11 I have like five shades of colors in my lips.

08:14 I just like to even it out.

08:15 Nothing do I love more than watching Taylor Swift

08:20 walk to the studio recording

08:22 or from the gym with her red lip.

08:24 I think it is so amazing,

08:26 but the thing that's most impressive

08:27 is that it is never messed up.

08:29 It's always in her natural lip line.

08:32 So I wish I could do that,

08:33 but I can't, so I stick to kind of like a gloss,

08:36 because if it gets messed up, you really can't tell.

08:39 I use this gloss by Anastasia called Sun Baked,

08:42 and it's just really good if you have brown skin.

08:45 I love a contoured makeup look,

08:50 but I am so bad at doing it.

08:52 So I got this brush to help me out.

08:55 It's kind of like a little narrow brush

08:57 you can really get in there on either side of my nose.

09:00 And I do a really light contour myself

09:02 because it can look kind of like clownish.

09:05 I am using this NARS bronzer color in Valley.

09:09 You can get like right up on the forehead,

09:11 which is a place where I like to be a little bit darker.

09:15 This was so much fun.

09:20 Thank you for joining me in my sneaky beat.

09:22 And shh, don't tell my mom friends how much time it took.

09:25 Bye, thanks.

09:26 (gentle music)

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