Awww! Matt Damon may not have been charmed by Mindy Kaling during Sunday's Super Bowl XLIX, but plenty of other people were — including her ex-boyfriend-turned-BFF B.J. Novak.
The Mindy Project star, 35, appeared in a Nationwide Insurance ad during the second quarter of the big game on Feb. 1, in which she imagines she's invisible and then does all kinds of ridiculous, indulgent things. She stretches naked in the park, steals food off someone's plate, walks through a car wash, and eats from a tub of ice cream in the middle of a grocery store.
It's only when she tries to sniff Damon, 44, that she realizes she can, in fact, be seen. "Mindy was actually not invisible," Julia Roberts says in a voiceover. "She had just always been treated that way."
After the spot aired on Sunday, Novak tweeted his support for Kaling, sending Mindy-B.J. shippers into a frenzy. As of Monday morning, his post had been retweeted 18,000 times.
YOU'RE NOT INVISIBLE TO ME @MINDYKALING ??
— B.J. Novak (@bjnovak) February 2, 2015
The former costars actually watched the game together, too. Kaling tweeted a photo of herself sitting on a couch with Novak and Mindy Project writer Jeremy Bronson (who's working on his own pilot, Sharing, for NBC, executive produced by Jimmy Fallon).
???????? pic.twitter.com/Ks2IUlNY1J
— Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling) February 1, 2015
Kaling's relationship with Novak is the stuff romantic comedies are made of. The two dated several years ago when they worked together on The Office, and then broke up but stayed friends.
"He's a good friend of mine, yeah. He's my best friend," she told Howard Stern back in September 2014, noting he initiated their split. "It was years and years ago that that breakup happened," she added. "I was so sad. Not angry, sad. That was the hottest I ever looked 'cause I stopped eating. When I get depressed I stop eating. I was so miserable and so beautiful."
Asked whether she would have married him if he'd asked, she admitted, "At the time? Yeah. I was 24. For the record, if anyone had asked me to marry them, I would have said yes."
