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The Cutest Photos of Birthday Girl Mindy Kaling & B.J. Novak

The Cutest Photos of Birthday Girl Mindy Kaling & B.J. Novak

The two started off as onscreen love interests on The Office and have been everyone's favorite will-they-or-won't-they couple ever since

By Andrea Wurzburger

March 24, 2020 09:00 AM

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Credit: Chris Haston/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty

The pair met while writing for and filming The Office, where they “kind of fell in love through doing that, and then dated on and off for a couple of years," Kaling told Vulture in 2012.

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Credit: Samantha Ronson/ Instagram

The two, who played onscreen, on-and-off couple Kelly and Ryan, dated on and off for a few years between 2004 and 2007, before ultimately calling it quits.

Novak told Vulture in 2012, "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. All you'd know for sure was that you'd always find one of us next to the other, even if we weren't getting along."

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Credit: Mindy Kailing/ Instagram

So fine, they have a complicated relationship. But would you just look at the way he looks at her?! This is from New Year's Eve, 2013.

"We kind of fell in love through [writing for the show], and then dated on and off for a couple of years, and now we are just, like, best friends," Kaling told Vulture in 2012. "Like, real best friends. It's the kind of friendship you have when you are embedded with someone, that you can only get by putting in that insane amount of time with people."

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Credit: Mindy Kailing / Instagram

Kaling told InStyle in 2015, "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.”

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Credit: BJ Novak/Instagram

"We're soup snakes. B.J. and I are soup snakes," Kaling wrote in her book, Why Not Me.

It's a reference to The Office, when Michael Scott tries to say that his ex, Holly, is his soulmate, but instead says "soup snakes."

"'Soul mates' is what you aim for, but soup snakes is what you get sometimes," Kaling explains.

Judging from this photo from Kaling's birthday in June 2019, we agree.

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Credit: BJ Novak/Instagram

B.J. said of being Kaling's best friend, "It is a fantastic relationship with a lot of shorthand. I feel so lucky that I get a brilliant text from Mindy Kaling, like, once an hour. It's like something you'd win at an auction — Mindy Kaling will blow up your phone!"

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Novak said in a Reddit AMA session that he and Mindy have always been close. "I was closest with Mindy Kaling, and also least close with Mindy Kaling, on a minute-by-minute basis," he shared. "And I wouldn't trade it for the world. Actually, I would trade it for the world. What am I talking about: I'd trade it for a more consistently positive relationship with Mindy Kaling. She's the best."

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Credit: Mindy Kailing/ Instagram

But really, y'all, they're not dating. Novak told Entertainment Weekly in 2013, "We are pretty inseparable best friends with a lot of chemistry ourselves, and we're not dating. Whenever we date anyone else, I think there's a period where the person is very skeptical of our friendship."

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Credit: Mindy Kailing/ Instagram

In 2013, they proved that they are amazing at taking photobooth photos.

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Credit: B.J Novack/ Instagram

And defended their title of cutest couple* with these Vanity Fair photo booth shots from 2018.

*We know they're not a couple, but let us live.

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Credit: B.J. Novak/Instagram

One year later, they cozied up once more in the photobooth at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party. Like fine wine, their friendship only gets better with age.

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Credit: Christopher Polk/Getty

They are the perfect red carpet dates. Here they are at the Golden Globes in 2010.

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Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty

Kaling says that the best thing about Novak is his belief in her. "We are so different and we fight a lot, but the gift he has always given me is the utter and total belief that I am one of the greats. And it is an intoxicating feeling," Kaling explained to The Guardian.

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Credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez/WireImage

They have a long-standing tradition of attending the Vanity Fair Oscar Party together, which started in 2014.

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Credit: Presley Ann Slack/Patrick McMullan via Getty

They also went together in 2017.

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Credit: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

...and 2018.

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Credit: Stewart Cook/WWD/REX/Shutterstock

And, naturally, 2019.

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Credit: Matt Baron/Shutterstock

This year makes their fifth party together, and the pair have somehow managed to look more and more adorable with each passing year. Maybe we've just got relationship-tinted glasses on, though.

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Credit: Todd Williamson/JanuaryImages/REX/Shutterstock

Kaling revealed that Novak is her daughter Katherine's godfather. She told Good Housekeeping, "If I was on the outside looking at it, I would think the same thing,” she said. “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.”

Kaling has yet to reveal who the father of her daughter is.

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Credit: Jerod Harris/Getty

She also said of Novak, "In the When Harry Met Sally version of platonic friends, I too think that’s strange, 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."

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Credit: Twitter

Well, I guess we'll just have to keep hoping that these soup snakes end up together.

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