Mila Kunis is generally known for giving charming, endearing interviews. That’s not the person The Star-Ledger‘s Stephen Whitty got on the phone last week, he claims.
In what turned out to be a review of the interview rather than a profile of the actress, Stephen said, “Every question I ask over the next 25 minutes seems to strike her as either dull, insulting or burdened by some sort of agenda.”
The reporter said Mila was on-edge from the very beginning. He speculated that had something to do with her pregnancy or the insensitive Gawker story published the same day… Either way, he said she clearly took some anger out on him.
In one of the awkward instances Stephen recounted, he asked Mila about moving from Ukraine to America when she was 7 years old.
“I’ve talked about me moving to America in a hundred interviews. It’s the most mundane subject possible, it’s like everyone’s immigrant story,” Mila said, allegedly cutting the reporter off when he asked whether she still has family there. “I know what your next question is so let’s just skip it. You’re going to ask me what I think about what’s going on now in Ukraine… It just seems weird to do an interview about Third Person and then it becomes about Ukraine, and that’s the headline.”
Stephen said he apologized for the offense and said she was welcome to talk about another subject — like why she got into acting.
“It was just a fun thing to do,” she said, supposedly with a sharp tone. “There was nothing else to it. I don’t know if that’s the answer you’re fishing for.”
Stephen said Mila only warmed when they began talking about her recent films, Jupiter Ascending and Third Person. He said of the tone, “This interview has gotten marginally easier, at last — at least, she hasn’t called any of my questions annoying, predictable or clueless in the last five minutes.”
By that point, though, their allotted talking time was up and Mila signed off. Stephen then got to work on writing the story — which he obviously did approach with an agenda.
Maybe this is because I just want to continue liking Mila, but I feel sorry for her with the way the article was written. She wanted to talk about her movies, while the New Jersey reporter was looking for a juicy angle. He ended up getting that by writing about her attitude, but it doesn’t strike me as particularly ethical… What’s your take?
