Mindy Kaling Says B.J. Novak Will Dress as Santa Claus to Surprise Her 3-Year-Old Daughter

Mindy Kaling is planning a treat for daughter Katherine by getting the girl's godfather, B.J. Novak, to turn into Santa Claus for Christmas.

By Ryan Gajewski Dec 23, 2020 8:07 AMTags
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Who needs Santa Claus when a TV star can do the job?

Mindy Kaling was a recent guest on Tory Burch's YouTube talk show, where the actress explained that her pal B.J. Novak has an unlikely acting role in mind for Christmas this year. Mindy said he intends to surprise her 3-year-old daughter Katherine and 3-month-old son Spencer by dressing up as a very sleepy Saint Nick. 

"Her godfather is B.J. Novak, and he is going to show up and go to our living room, where the tree is, in a Santa costume," Mindy said about Katherine in the interview that was released on Dec. 18 but recently started getting media attention. "Just so you know, we're Hindu and B.J. is Jewish, so this is, like, cultural appropriation on our part."

As it turns out, the longtime friends and former co-stars on The Office have a complicated plan in place to bring holiday cheer to the little ones. 

"This is the whole ruse that we're going to do, and this might become a tradition," the Wrinkle in Time star continued. "We're going to be baking cookies, and then all of a sudden, we're going to hear bells from another room, and I'm going to go, 'Kit, what do you think that is?' And then we're going to go over to the living room where we hear bells, and B.J., dressed as Santa, is going to be asleep on the sofa with a bag because he needed to take a rest."

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In case anyone was wondering whether this intricate story line would be too much for a child to grasp, or even whether Katherine will realize that it's her godfather in costume, Mindy acknowledged that there might be some hiccups.

"Tory, it's so complicated why Santa was there, why he's taking a nap, but we're going to do that," the actress quipped. "Will she know it's him on some level? We don't know."

The 41-year-old Never Have I Ever co-creator, who has yet to identify the father of either child, revealed B.J.'s role in her daughter's life during an interview in May 2019. 

"The truth is that B.J. is so much more like family now than a platonic friend," Mindy said at the time. "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."

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