Mindy Kaling appeared on the Today Show this week. She’s not promoting struck work – she was there to talk about her new Amazon deal where she’s basically highlighting diverse writers, sort of like a book club but it’s more like “hey, Mindy Kaling recommends this book!” She’s also highlighting Lion Pose, the skincare company she recently invested in. Of course, Jenna Bush and Hoda Kotb drove the conversation into Mindy’s love life! Mindy actually said some really beautiful things about her two children and missing her own mother (who passed away several years ago).

Mindy Kaling is past her teenage boy-crazy phase, but that doesn’t mean she’s taken romance off the table. In conversation with Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager on Monday’s episode of Today, the 44-year-old Never Have I Ever creator said her once boy-obsessed nature has “definitely” ended.

“I think when I was younger, I was so far away from anything close to attention from boys, so I just imagined it,” the actress said as she reflected on her teenage years. “I had this over-active imagination cause even then I was like a writer and a creative, so I used to love these stories about people falling in love and going to movies and seeing Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in romantic comedies and all that.” At the time, romance was like “science fiction” to Kaling. “It was so far away from anything that I was part of,” she told Kotb, 59, and Bush Hager, 41.

Now, The Mindy Project star has slightly more realistic expectations about love, but she’s still open to it.

“I’m still a romantic at heart and I write these stories about people finding love when they least expect it. So of course, I’m open to that and I believe in magic and timing.”

Kaling added that her father found love again after the death of her mother, and his second chance at romance gives her hope too. “He’s an Indian man and he was in his 60s and he moved to L.A. without knowing anyone and then they met in the same apartment building. And they are such an amazing couple. People find love in unexpected places. So I don’t know about it for me personally right now, but I’m always open to it.”

[From People]

Can we really talk about this? Because I have some thoughts! As I’ve said many times before, I’m overly invested in Mindy’s life. I don’t actually think she is “open” to love or a new relationship because she’s still so f–king hung up on BJ Novak. He’s still in her life, he’s godfather to her children (if not the actual father) and he takes up a huge amount of emotional space in her life. It also feels like he controls the relationship, that he’s dictating the terms and parameters of their “friendship.” I feel like most men steer clear because Mindy is so clearly still hung up on BJ and everyone can see their unhealthy dynamic from miles away. But the story about her dad was really nice.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.