July 19, 2016

Mila Kunis Says There’s No Such Thing As Having It All

By Katie Van Syckle

Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

The new comedy Bad Moms, out July 29, stars Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryn Hahn as three mothers who have had enough.

Kunis plays Amy, a perpetually frazzled working mother of two who’s married to a bozo. After an emergency PTA meeting called by mean-girl mom Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate) to discuss impossible bake-sale requirements — no sugar, butter, salt, eggs, or wheat — Amy loses it. She publicly declares she will no longer try to be perfect.

Instead, she’ll be a — wait for it — bad mom. She’ll give the kids Arby’s sometimes, make her children do their own homework, and drive a fun car. Although the film is written and directed by the male team behind The Hangover, it plays like part buddy-comedy, part Anne-Marie Slaughter essay, arguing that women can’t have it all.

So when the Cut ran into Kunis last night, at a special New York City screening of the new film from STX Entertainment at the Metrograph, we had to ask her: How can women have it all?

“There is no such thing,” Kunis said. She has one daughter, 21-month-old Wyatt, with husband Ashton Kutcher, and is expecting a second. “Simply put, the idea of balance doesn’t exist. You have to be okay with one thing not getting the attention it needs at any particular time. It is your work or your kid, but you can’t balance it. There is really, in my opinion, no such thing. One will take a weight.”

The only solution, she says, is to ask for help — which as a celebrity, Kunis can afford — and not lose your sense of self (a point the movie makes with a PTA meeting that turns into a wine-fueled rager).

“I have an amazing support system in my life,” Kunis said. “A happy woman, a fulfilled woman, will only make a better mother. And at the end of the day, I have to be happy with who I am and what I do. That is the only way I’ll be able to be a good mom for my daughter.”