Mindy Kaling recalls ‘genuinely scary’ moment a man broke into BJ Novak’s car while they had dinner

The actor was eight-and-a-half months pregnant at the time

Mindy Kaling has revealed that the most “genuinely scary situation” she has experienced involved a man who broke into her The Office co-star BJ Novak’s car while they were out to dinner.

The Mindy Project star said the incident occurred when she was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with her daughter, Katherine, who is now four years old.

During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday (31 October), Kaling recalled how she and Novak stopped the man from stealing his things after they discovered he had broken into the car.

“The most genuinely scary situation I’ve ever been in was when I was actually eight-and-a-half months pregnant with [Katherine],” she told host Jimmy Kimmel.

“I went to dinner with my friend BJ Novak… He parked the car and we got out of the car, I noticed there was a weird kind of guy staring at us from the parking meter.”

The pair, who are good friends and frequently spend time together, were in Los Angeles at this time.

Kaling said she was concerned about the man at first, but felt somewhat reassured after he told them he was a fan of The Office.

“Then we walked down to go to the restaurant,” she continued. “Restaurant’s closed, for whatever reason. And then we walked back to the car, and when we walk back to the car – what we think is the car – we’re like, ‘Oh that’s probably not it, because there’s somebody sitting in the driver’s seat’, and we keep walking.”

But after walking further, they realised they had gone too far and turned back to the car they passed earlier, which was Novak’s car.

“The guy that we had talked to by the meter had gotten into BJ’s car, was sitting in the driver’s seat, and had BJ’s laptop open and was on BJ’s laptop,” she said. “Which is so strange, he didn’t try to steal his stuff.”

Kaling recalled how the pair decided to confront the stranger and she blocked the driver’s side door so he couldn’t get away.

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Although she was heavily pregnant at the time, the Never Have I Ever producer joked that her “sense of justice was greater than my sense of wanting to live”.

Eventually, after Novak received his laptop and other personal items back from the man, they let the man out of the car.

As the intruder exited, Kaling said he turned to them and said: “’You guys should be careful. Anybody could just get in your car’.

“As though this whole thing had been this like, ruse, he had planned to teach us a valuable lesson,” the actor said incredulously. “By the way, it did teach us that! And then he kind of wandered away.”

Earlier this year, Kaling addressed rumours that Novak is the father of her two children, Katherine and Spencer, two.

She has always kept the paternity of her children private, but revealed to Marie Claire that she is not “bothered” by the speculation.

“[Novak] is the godparent to both my kids – and they have such a great relationship – and so far [the rumours haven’t] affected my happiness at all, it hasn’t affected my kids or BJ,” she said.