Ten minutes into Running Point, Netflix’s new basketball comedy from Mindy Kaling, Elaine Ko, David Stassen, and Ike Barinholtz, I found myself making a mental shopping list: Statement belts. A slinky sweater dress. A croc-embossed leather two-piece set.
My proclivity to shop is surprising to no one, least of all me, but what was surprising was that I had been influenced by a TV show that is, on its face, about the sweaty, masculine, occasionally gaudy world of professional basketball. (Sex and the City, this is not.) But with Kate Hudson and Brenda Song in starring roles, the fashion inspiration just kept coming. I was unexpectedly energized about the prospect of a “professional wardrobe,” a concept I’d abandoned in the wake of COVID and work-from-home culture.
Running Point stars Hudson as Isla Gordon, the newly appointed president of a fictional Los Angeles basketball franchise called the Waves. The show is loosely inspired by Jeanie Buss, the president and owner of the LA Lakers. Like Isla, Buss is part of a basketball dynasty—her father, Jerry Buss, revolutionized the big business of the NBA during the ’80s—and she eventually took the reins of $7.1 billion franchise. Also like Isla, Buss faced sexism in the male dominated field, and was ruthlessly underestimated again and again.
One place their stories diverge? Their wardrobes. Where Jeanie was a California girl through and through, partial to denim and leather jackets, Isla is polished to the nines every single day—think suits, heels, and a perfect beat.
“When you work for Mindy Kaling, it’s always an aspirational show,” Salvador Pérez Jr., Kaling’s longtime collaborator, tells Glamour. “I went to the office of the Lakers, and how they dress is not how we did them. [But] they don’t have a full-time staff of 10 people to put the looks together for them. They put on what’s in their closets. For the show, we wanted to give the characters very specific looks.”
Realism, adds Perez, was not the goal. “Mindy always uses the word effortful, not effortless,” he says. Read on for more from our conversation, and stream Running Point on Netflix on February 27.
Warning, spoilers for season one ahead!
Glamour: Congrats on the show! It was really exciting to watch a delightful comedy that’s also filled with women who are fabulously dressed.
Salvador Pérez Jr.: Well, that’s why I work for Mindy Kaling, because she lets me do that.
Let’s talk about Kate Hudson’s character, Isla Gordon. What was on your mood board for her?
Isla started out as sort of the former party girl who was in Playboy Magazine, and wasn’t taken seriously, so we wanted her character to wear the clothes that were [already] in her closet.
When she first starts working in the office, she still has her party-girl clothes, but she’s having to make them professional. Her suits are much more refined towards the later episodes compared to the first suit she wears, that bright pink suit.
