There Are So Many Weird Things About Mindy Kaling And BJ Novak's Relationship

Romance gossip comes and goes in Hollywood, but the relationship between Mindy Kaling and B.J. Novak is the gift that keeps on giving. For two decades, the former "The Office" colleagues have had us guessing about their status. But in their defense, they might not even know it themselves. Their relationship has so many strange aspects to it that the public has been captivated by its mystery throughout the years.

Novak and Kaling were previously a couple, and then they weren't a couple anymore, but they also weren't not a couple. Despite the unclarity, "The Mindy Project" stars remain steadfast in their loyalty to each other all these years later. When Kaling received her star on The Hollywood Walk of Fame in February 2025, Novak was the one who gave a speech in her honor — and called her his "soup-snake," which is "The Office" lingo for soulmate. "You'd be on the walk of talent if they had one," he added. "You'd be on the walk of friendship. You'd be on the walk of compassionate parenthood, but let's face it, all of these would be terrible field trips," he said.

In her speech, Kaling addressed his role in her life. "[He's an] important and integral part of my family," she said, according to People. A few days later, the non-couple attended the Vanity Fair Oscars party, raising eyebrows for being rather cozy with each other. The exes-turned-friends-turned-family have captured our attention for a long time — and it seemingly won't stop anytime soon. 

Mindy Kaling's relationship with B.J. Novak has always been complicated. They became close first as colleagues when they worked as writers and later as co-stars on "The Office," but their chemistry turned into something different. But what that was exactly is unclear — even to the two of them. "No one, including us, ever really knew, 'Is this dating? Is this not dating?' We were never really dating, we were never really not dating. We didn't know. No one knew," Novak told Vulture in 2012.

Even though their relationship status was a mystery, Kaling and Novak knew for sure that they wanted to be around each other no matter what. "All you'd know for sure [is] that you'd always find one of us next to the other, even if we weren't getting along," he said. Their complex dynamics seeped through their writing, impacting their characters' relationship onscreen. "So, Kelly needed a boyfriend this week, so Ryan goes on a date. Ryan and Kelly are getting engaged ... I think it was sort of expressive of the relationship that we were in," Novak explained.

Novak and Kaling reportedly put an end to the romantic side of their relationship in 2007, about two years after an on-again, off-again deal. Kaling reportedly started dating writer Benjamin Nugent shortly after, but Novak took no issue with it. After all, the celebrity exes continued to work together for several years — and continued to deepen their bond. 

B.J. Novak developed a lifelong friendship with Mindy Kaling, but he couldn't have imagined it when he first met her. When he joined "The Office" in 2005, Novak was interested in meeting the people who would advance his career. As a young writer like himself, Kaling didn't fit the bill, so he initially paid little attention to her. "My first reaction when I met her was indifference," Novak said in a Zoom interview posted on Tumblr. "Because I was so focused on the other, sort of senior people at the table."

Kaling, on the other hand, was eager to connect with Novak. "She was like, 'Let's be friends!' And I was like, 'Sure, sure, okay,'" he said dismissively. Novak may have needed time to appreciate Kaling's talent, but she immediately saw his. "Wow, that guy is so brilliant — so funny and so unfriendly. I just need him to like me," she recalled thinking upon meeting him in her acceptance speech at the Producers Guild of America in 2023.

Their connection happened gradually, as both were new in town and knew no one. "None of us had lives. I think that's why so many of us, including me and Mindy, became so close," he said on "Fresh Air with Terry Gross" in 2021. He's glad Kaling saw their potential, though. "Of course, she ended up becoming the most important person in my life," he shared in the Zoom video.

Mindy Kaling and B.J. Novak aren't a couple, but they aren't regular friends, either. They know it, and their love interests over the years knew it, too. "We are pretty inseparable best friends with a lot of chemistry ourselves, and we're not dating," he told Entertainment Weekly in 2013. Anytime a new person came into the picture, they would try to make sense of what the deal was. They wouldn't even necessarily be jealous.

Kaling and Novak's friendship is so unusual that prospective boyfriends and girlfriends believed they were actually intruding. They would ask, "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?" Novak recalled. To their credit, even Kaling is confused by their relationship. "I will freely admit: My relationship with B.J. Novak is weird as hell," she told InStyle in 2015 (via E! News).

She tried to describe it, but it made it all even more confusing. "He is not my boyfriend, but he is not my best friend," she said. "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." The fact that neither of them has really dated anyone publicly has certainly not helped the situation seem clearer at all.

B.J. Novak may not have been in a romantic relationship with Mindy Kaling in about two decades, but he plays an important role in her children's lives. "He's the godparent to both my kids— and they have such a great relationship," she told Marie Claire in 2022, before she gave Katherine and Spencer their little sister Anne in 2024. Since Kaling hasn't — and won't — reveal the identity of her children's father, her best friend seems to be the main male presence in their lives. 

Novak even spends holidays with the Kalings, putting in considerable effort to make it a special occasion. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Novak started a sweet Christmas tradition for Kaling's kids. "He is going to show up and go to our living room, where the tree is, in a Santa costume," she told Tory Burch on "ToryTalks" in 2020, disregarding their Hindu and Jewish upbringings. "This is, like, cultural appropriation on our part, to be Christian," she laughed.

Novak is just as present outside of the holiday season. He goes to Kaling's house about once a week to fulfill his godfather's duties. "Sometimes he'll come over just to hang out with [them]," Kaling told GoodHousekeeping in 2019, when she only had Katherine. Now that Katherine and Spencer are older, they even decorate cakes to celebrate Novak's birthday. "Happy birthday, Uncle B. This cake is not fancy!" they wrote on one in 2024 (as seen above on Kaling's Instagram).

Mindy Kaling can never make any reference to B.J. Novak on social media without netizens sharing their opinion on their former romance and his relationship with her children. "You're not gonna convince us that he's just a random uncle," one Instagram user commented on the post featuring the birthday cake. It wasn't the only one — as it rarely is. "Uncle? You mean Daddy right?" wrote another user. But Kaling isn't fazed by the Novak paternity rumors. "It doesn't bother me," she said in her Marie Claire interview.

At least not yet — and she doesn't expect them to anytime soon. After all, she's made a career out of entertaining people. "So far [the rumors haven'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," she told Marie Claire. The public's interest in the matter has grown in proportion to Kaling's attempts to keep it private. Her children's birth certificates have no father listed, and she reportedly never shared the man's identity with anyone, suggesting it was her decision to become a single mother.

Because her situation is unique, Kaling won't address it publicly before her children are old enough to understand it. "My feeling is that until I speak to my daughter about that, I'm not going to talk to anyone else about it," she told The New York Times in 2019, before Spencer and Anne came along.

B.J. Novak has no children of his own, but that hasn't stopped him from imparting pearls of parenting advice to Mindy Kaling. Novak has not only offered thought-provoking parenting advice to Kaling but also advice that touches on self-love and feminism. Because she harbored a lot of insecurities about her looks as a kid, Kaling tried to overcompensate with her eldest, Katherine. "I grew up always feeling ugly, overweight, othered," she said on Meghan Markle's podcast "Archetypes" in 2022.

Kaling feared her daughter might have similar experiences and did her best to prevent it. "I'm always telling her that she's beautiful," she said. That was the dynamic until Novak stepped in. "My friend B.J. is like, 'You can tell her other compliments,'" she shared. Novak made her realize she was inadvertently making Katherine pay too much attention to the way she looked. "Every morning, I'm like, 'You're so beautiful,' to the point where that's not healthy either," she said. "But I do think that's how we can change things."

Novak may not be a parent, but he's pretty good with children — evidenced not just by his relationship with Kaling's children but also by his 2014 New York Times best-selling children's book, "The Book With No Pictures." His lack of kids isn't for lack of interest, as he has been open about wanting to be a father. "I just need more of a test audience," Novak told The Guardian in 2015.