Always prepared. Mindy Kaling is so close B.J. Novak that her kitchen is stocked in case he stops by for a visit.
“I want to have a tacit policy in my house that you can help yourself. You don’t even need to get a napkin or a plate. Just get a snack. My dear friend B.J. Novak will come over whenever he’s in town, and he never says he’ll stay for a meal, but he always eats a meal’s worth of snacks,” Kaling, 43, told Better Homes & Gardens for their June cover story, which was published on Wednesday, May 10.
The actress continued: “I’m not going to pin this on him because I love snacks, too. But we always make sure we have little crunchy snacks out for him … So, great snacks! That, to me, is what makes my house feel like a home.”
Kaling, who is a mother to kids Katherine, 5, and Spencer, 2, broke down her preference for an “open-door” policy in her home, adding, “Being a hostess and someone who has a door wide-open policy is my dream, where you can run around barefoot, there’s tons of food and kids, where things feel beautiful and informal at the same time.”
Novak, 43, and Kaling originally met while working on NBC’s sitcom The Office. They dated on and off from 2004 to 2007, which mirrored the relationship between their onscreen characters.
After the workplace comedy came to an end, Novak discussed the challenges that came with trying to move on while remaining on good terms with Kaling.
“Whenever we date anyone else, I think there’s a period where the person is very skeptical of our friendship,” the director, who is the godfather of Kaling’s two kids, told Entertainment Weekly in 2013. “‘Everyone seems to think you two might be a couple, and I don’t mean to get in the way. ‘Are you sure you’re not dating? Are you sure you’re not going to end up dating?’ It’s such a common thing to have that platonic best friend that becomes a little weird when you start dating someone.”
The Mindy Project star, for her part, weighed in on her decision to maintain a close-knit friendship with her ex. “He is not my boyfriend, but he is not my best friend,” she told InStyle in 2015. “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.”
More recently, Kaling addressed fan speculation that Novak is the father of her children. “It doesn’t bother me,” she told Marie Claire in August 2022. “He’s the godparent to both my kids — and they have such a great relationship. ”So [the speculation hasn’t] affected my happiness at all, it hasn’t affected my kids or B.J. If that’s what is going to be titillating to people, I’ll take it.”
The former couple poked fun at their dating history one month later while presenting at the 2022 Emmys.
“To all the nominees we want to say, congratulations you lazy sons of bitches. How are you getting away with it? We did 22 [episodes] a year. It would take up your whole life. [There] was no time for other projects and no time for a social life. You had no choice but to form complicated relationships with your costars,” the Velma star joked while presenting the Outstanding Writing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie award in September 2022.
The Premise creator for his part, added: “Now you can just write some self-contained masterpiece, cast it with movie stars, Shoot it for a few weeks and go back to your fancy luxury compound. Maybe you shot the whole thing at your fancy luxury compound in all honesty.”
