Mindy Kaling truly is a prize-worthy talent, but even her biggest fans would probably admit that she's not quite ready for the Nobel Prize. That didn't stop one fan from complimenting her effusively — when he confused her with actual Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai.
As The New York Times reported in a profile, "a tipsy man in his 80s cornered [Kaling] and showered her with compliments" during an afterparty at The New Yorker Festival on Oct. 11.
He congratulated Kaling on Yousafzai's Nobel Peace Prize, bravery and survival following a Taliban attack (all things that are true of the 17-year-old Pakistani-born Yousafzai — but not of 35-year-old Kaling, the Massachusetts native of Indian descent).
"Did he really think I'm Malala?" she asked in the article. "And that if I were, I'd be at the Boom Boom Room?"
Still, if you've got to be mistaken for anybody, that's not a bad confusion to be a part of. "That's the best thing that's happened all night," she chuckled.
"The Mindy Show" creator and star wasn't the only one amused by the error; TODAY's Willie Geist tweeted about it after reading the article:
To which Kaling tweeted right back: