Ever since they appeared as Kelly Kupoor and Ryan Howard on The Office, the world can’t stop shipping Mindy Kaling and B.J. Novak. In fact, both of the actors get asked constantly if they're secretly dating, and rumors only intensified after Mindy gave birth to her daughter, Katherine, and decided not to reveal her father (a total badass move, if you ask us).
“If I was on the outside looking at it, I would think the same thing,” she told GoodHousekeeping.com at a luncheon for her year-long partnership with DSW. “But the truth is that B.J. is so much more like family now than a platonic friend. He’s the godfather to my daughter, he comes over like once a week. Sometimes he’ll come over just to hang out with her.”
In fact, she’s expecting to see B.J. tomorrow, and she even grabbed dinner with him (along with her dad and stepmom) last week.
However, their story goes way back to the writers' room at NBC in 2004. They dated on-and-off in their early Office days, but now she calls him “a real staple in my household.”
“In the When Harry Met Sally version of platonic friends, I too think that’s strange,” she says. “But when you’ve known someone for as long as I’ve known him — the time that we met each other, which was like 24. Now, we’re both almost 40. It’s such a long time that he truly is just a part of my family.”
Of course, this is not the first time Mindy's addressed her relationship with B.J.: “My relationship with B.J. Novak is weird as hell. He is not my boyfriend, but he is not my best friend. I guess you could describe our relationship as a ‘romantically charged camaraderie with loud arguments,’ but I don’t think Facebook would accept this as a new status," she told InStyle in 2015.
But she says now, that sentiment (which she also mentioned in her book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?) has changed.
“Even that’s shifted,” she says. “He comes to Christmas and he’s just a member of the family now. But I do remember saying that, in my first book, I think … but I’m so old. That came out, like, eight years ago!”
These days, Mindy is promoting her new movie Late Night with costar Emma Thompson, her upcoming Hulu miniseries Four Weddings and a Funeral, and her exciting partnership with DSW. (You can even shop her favorite spring picks now). But no matter what she does, we know B.J. will be cheering her on.
All of us dreaming of a Mindy and B.J. coupling will have to keep swooning over their inimitable Instagram/Twitter banter (does Cookie Monster really have a wife?!), and rest easy knowing B.J. is one epic godfather.
Blake Bakkila has been writing about everything from pop culture to lifestyle products for more than eight years. Her work has appeared on GoodHousekeeping.com, WhattoExpect.com, Health.com, and in the print and digital versions of Real Simple and People.
