Sing Along With the Trailer for Mindy Kaling’s New Show About a Gay, Musical Theater-Loving Teen
Mindy Kaling’s been busy! Though her show The Mindy Project has wrapped production, she’s starring in the Disney adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, directed by Ava DuVernay. But Kaling hasn’t forsaken television for the silver screen. On her Instagram, Kaling shared the Champions trailer, the first look at her new show.
Champions was co-created by Kaling and Charlie Grandy. (Grandy also worked with her on The Mindy Project, The Office and Saturday Night Live.) The show stars Anders Holm as Vince, the owner of the Brooklyn Champions gym. Vince lives with his brother, Matthew (played by Andy Favreau), but soon, Vince’s high school fling Priya (played by Kaling) arrives with her son Michael (played by J.J. Totah) in tow. If you can’t guess where this is going, we won’t leave you in suspense — Michael is Vince’s teenage son.
Michael’s gay — he even comes out in the trailer, as if the “Born This Way” soundtrack weren’t enough of a clue. He’s really into musical theater, and has wanted to move to New York since he “saw Bernadette Peters sing ‘Send in the Clowns’ on PBS.”
The trailer features a number of musical theater references — and a couple of sung lines — though sadly, it doesn’t look like it’ll be nearly as much of a love letter to musicals as the CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. For instance, unlike that show, Champions doesn’t appear to be a musical itself. (Aww.)
The show also features out comedian Fortune Feimster as well as Yassir Lester and Ginger Gonzaga from Key and Peele.
We must admit being slightly nervous about the way the trailer seems to play up dated jokes about how gay men love the theater — particularly musicals — but we’ve got faith the show will be a lot more nuanced than that.
