Stephen Colbert is apologizing after being a little too eager to say hello to Mindy Kaling.
Mindy visited The Late Show on Wednesday, July 14 to promote the second season of Netflix's Never Have I Ever. Toward the end of their conversation, Stephen abruptly changed the topic to address a moment from earlier in the day that he wished he could take back.
"Now I'd also like to apologize for earlier," he somewhat mysteriously told his guest. This led the 42-year-old alum of The Mindy Project to reply, "OK, I didn't know if you were going to bring it up, and I felt bad bringing this up."
She went on to explain to the confused audience, "I was backstage getting changed, and I was just in a pair of pants and my bra." Stephen then continued with, "And I don't usually do this—I usually wait till the guests are in the wings—but I thought I would just go, 'Hey, have a great show!' So I popped the door open. I knocked, but I did that knock-and-pop."
Mindy pointed out that she didn't "have any clothes on," but that her mind immediately went to an unexpected place. "And I just thought the whole time like, 'I wish I had worn a sexier bra.' Because I was like, 'He works hard,'" she quipped, leading to laughter from the crowd. The mom of two, who welcomed son Spencer in September, then explained, "I have a 10-month-old. It was like a gray bra, just sad."
The 57-year-old host then assured his guest he "didn't see a thing," leading Mindy to graciously say, "And then I was thinking, whose fault is it, though? Is it the person who doesn't lock—I should have locked the door."
Stephen took all the blame but commended the star's team for lunging at her to keep him from getting an inadvertent eyeful. "They hurled themselves in front of you like I was an assassin," he recalled with a laugh. "I couldn't see anything if I had wanted to."
Mindy agreed and added, "I felt like Meghan Markle. They were like, 'You will not pass!' Like you had bad intentions. Like, it's still Stephen Colbert."
With that exceptionally awkward exchange out of the way, Stephen then quickly announced tune-in details for Never Have I Ever to end the segment, leading the crowd to enjoy a hearty bout of nervous laughter after the strange moment everyone had just experienced.
Indeed, if TV viewers had been missing the cringe-inducing comedy perfected by Mindy's series The Office, they got more than their fair share from this evening's Late Show.