Mindy Kaling reveals how she got 'away with' keeping pregnancy secret

Mindy Kaling shocked her fans when she announced that she secretly had a baby during coronavirus quarantine. Now she's revealing that motherhood the second time around is a blast, even if her road to baby No. 2 wasn't exactly conventional.

In an interview Wednesday on the fourth hour of TODAY, the actor, 41, shared that her son, Spencer, recently turned 7 weeks old. Kaling is also mom to daughter Katherine, 2.

"This time has been so challenging," the comedian told TODAY's Jenna Bush Hager. "So just to have this little, cuddly 9-pound human living with me has just been the most fun, uplifting thing."

Asked by Jenna how she kept pregnancy and giving birth a secret, she explained, "With him, I would occasionally have meetings. So from here up, I would have to look nice, but I was just kind of like pregnant, and no one saw. And I just thought, 'What if I could get away with this?'"

The "Office" alum went on to explain that little Katherine was initially not thrilled about her baby bro but has adapted quickly.

"She was very suspicious and worried about him at the beginning," Kaling said. "Because I think in her mind, she thought that he would come out as a 2-year-old. She kept saying like, 'I'm really worried about my toys.' And then when she saw that he was just like this helpless, little, adorable blob, but like not that interested in toys at all, she's like, 'Oh, I love this guy.'"

Jenna, who's a mom of three herself, went on to ask her guest about how motherhood in reality compares to what she'd been expecting.

"I imagined that with motherhood, that somehow my personality would completely change, that I would become this incredibly maternal person who did all these other things," Kaling said. "I've actually found that I didn't change, but somehow, like, just my heart expanded a little bit."

Kaling is raising her two kids as a single mom and isn't focused on dating anytime soon, but she's excited about her prospects, she revealed.

"I had this kind of really outdated feeling that no person would really be interested in dating someone with kids, even though I knew empirically that wasn't true," she told Jenna. "What I found now is that with dating — and obviously I have a 7-week-old so I'm not focused on like, dating at all — is that a lot of the people who got married when we were, like, in our 20s got divorced and have kids now and who are interested in finding a woman who has gone through something similar. So it's been interesting seeing the new pool of men that are kind of out there and that are appealing to me."

Becoming a parent has also made Kaling more religious, she said. "I would go to religious functions, but I felt pretty secular, and it wasn't until I had my daughter, and my mother who passed, that I found that my faith felt like something that bonded all of our generations together because of the rituals we do."

Jenna also asked Kaling about her "Office" co-star B.J. Novak, who's the godfather of her children.

"What do you expect of him?" Jenna asked.

"You know, he said the funniest thing because he's so attached to my older child, my daughter," Kaling responded. "When I said, you know, B.J., if something happens to me, it's not like I have a husband, like you have to just take the kids. And he's like, 'Oh, my God, don't tempt me.'

"And he said the funniest thing. He was like, 'Can you sue for god paternity rights? Because he's the godfather because he just like loves her so much."

The "Mindy Project" creator also shared a little bit about her approach to writing the highly anticipated third "Legally Blonde" film, starring Reese Witherspoon.

"It was really daunting because it's such an iconic movie," Kaling recalled. "The thing that made it the most appealing was the fact that she's now 20 years older. So what is like the 42-year-old version of Elle Woods? Like what is she like? Is she as chipper? Has life gotten her down at all? Has she become cynical at all? Or is she exactly the same?"

"For me, I thought making her that age and having her gone through the same kinds of things that I've gone through as a 40-year-old, made it fun," she said.