Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Mila Kunis

Episode Date: October 2, 2022

Mila Kunis landed her first regular acting gig at 14-years old by fibbing a bit about her age. She would go on to star for eight seasons in That 70s Show across from her future husband, Ashton Kutcher. Since then, the versatile actress has played roles ranging from Meg Griffin on Family Guy to a ballerina with a dark side in Black Swan, for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination. Now, she leads the intense new Netflix movie Luckiest Girl Alive based on the bestselling book. Willie Geist and Kunis got together in New York for a Sunday Sitdown. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks as always for clicking and listening along. I genuinely am always excited to bring you these conversations, but sometimes a little more so. Today is one of those days. Milakunis is my guest, and I say that because she's just smart and cool and fun to talk to and great to have a conversation with about anything. Talk about acting. That's cool.

She talks about going on a road trip during the pandemic. with Ashton Coochard, that's cool. Then we get a little weird because Ashton is running the New York City Marathon. Let's see, I don't want to spoil this too much, but he's experiencing some chafing during his training. And he and Mila are trading tips about how to address that. Mila is in a new Netflix film called Luckyest Girl Alive. It's based on a 2015 best-selling book by Jessica Knoll.

The movie is produced by Mila's production company. and it is an intense movie. It is a dark movie. You'll hear us kind of dance around it because we don't want to give away too much. But I think you'll get the gist of it. It's a heavy role and she does a great job in it. So much to talk to her about. Family Guy, 70s show, bad moms.

I mean, go on and on and on. Black Swan for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actors. There's so much there, but really it's just fun. So I'm going to shut up and turn things over. over now on the Sunday Sit Down podcast to Mila Kunis. Good to see you, Mila. Nice to see you. Thanks for doing this.

It's been a couple of years, I guess, right, since we got together. Yep, different restaurants, same people. Yeah, we just moved restaurants. We ate, restaurants stays the same. You got a lot going on, though. You got a lot of new stuff going on since I saw you. How did COVID go for you and Ashton and the kids? How did you make it through?

Here, I'm going to find some wood. That's not wood. You know what? We got really lucky. I think for multitude of reasons, our jobs allowed us to work from home. Yeah. So we, that was really lucky. We like each other.

And so we like being together. And we had babies who were like at that perfect age where they weren't, they were social enough to continue being pseudo-social. And they also didn't have enough friends where they didn't love anybody but ourselves. So, you know, they were, we created a little pod school. Kids were happy. We were great. Again, we got really lucky. We didn't leave the house, though, for a solid two years.

Yeah. It was a litmus test, though, wasn't it? Like, some families and some couples were like, oh, this is the worst. But if you like each other, as you do, and I do my wife, it was like, we got this. Honestly, I don't know if this is, like, a bad joke. But it fed into our codependence, like, relationship that we already had for 10 years, this was just, like, a perfect cherry on the top. Right.

I was like, well, to this day, we still are in the same house. Like, we haven't migrated out and gotten offices. or anything. Yeah. That weird. No, I think it's great. I think it's great things about your relationship. I don't know.

But, yeah, yeah, I know. I do recommend leaving the house occasionally. Have you started at all? No, really. With hiking. But I do nature. Well, like, I leave the house to go and do, like, a nature walk, all or whatever. But as far as doing things outside of the house, I'm still in the habit of Instacarting.

This is not a plug for Instacard or whatever food delivery service you do. I still am in that habit, which I, um, I'm actively trying to break is like going back into the grocery store. That's been weird for me. Yeah. I was saying, I was doing another show earlier this morning and we were inside of a building and the room was filled like it is today with no one wearing a mask. And I have never been indoors with a room filled with people with no mask on.

Oh, is that right? Yeah. It's happening out here. Yeah. New York's like, forget it. Like we're done. Which, by the way, I love. So I'm like, okay, I need to like, I like this version of life better than,

but when my kids are comfortable not wearing it. a mask. It's me that's like, I really like it. Yeah. You'll see them on the subway, the masks. Yeah. But otherwise, it's like open season. It also allows me to walk down the street and not be recognized. That is nice. So there's a part of me that like loves this mask thing because I can do more stuff. Right. The way we did a massive road trip over the summer. And the only reason we could have done it the way that we did it was because my husband and I were able to just wear masks when we went to like all the national park monuments and things. You loaded up the RV? Yes. For three weeks. Oh, that's amazing. We had the,

Best, three weeks. And you saw all the stuff. We tried to hit up as many national parks on, like, you know, west of the Mississippi, like on our side. But we did, what do we did? L.A., Joshua, to Joshua, Kingman, Kingman, Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon, Moab, like, Arches, Arches, Monument Valley, to Denver, to Mount Rushmore, to Crazy Horse, to... Yellowstone? And then we went through Yellowstone, right as it reopened. That's incredible.

Yeah. That's like the trip of a lifetime. that you probably wouldn't have done under other circumstances. I don't know if we could have done it without a mask. It was great. That's cool. Well, you also left the house to make an extraordinary movie. Oh, yeah, I did that.

Yes. So I have left the house. You did do that. You did do that. Luckyest Girl Alive. I told you I just got finished watching it. It is your performance is amazing. Thank you.

It's tough at times. It's really good. How did you come to the story? It's based on a novel, best-selling novel, a very popular book. Had you read the book? Were you aware of the story? How did you get your hands on it?

So it was sent to me as a script. The title seemed familiar. So I assumed that I had read it previously. And I was like, oh, I should Google this because this obviously sounds super familiar. And then I googled the name of the title, and the book popped up. And I realized that I had read it five, six years prior.

I just didn't remember reading it. And then I went, oh, I don't remember what the twists are. I knew that there were twists and things. And I was like, ooh, this will be a really fun read. So I can say I read the script for the first time, not knowing what was going to happen, but I did technically read the book prior to reading the script first. And I remembered what I loved about it, which was all going back to Jessica Noel.

So, also, rarely do you ever have a book written and the script written by the same writer? Oftentimes, they get a different writer in and just wrote the script completely by herself in the book. And it keeps her tone, and there's, like, this essence about her that I think makes her an extraordinary writer, where moving forward, if there's the next Jessica Noll movie, you'll be able to know that she wrote it just based on the cadence of her characters. So to me, that was really exciting. I think the tone of it was different than all the other movies that I've seen when it came to, like, the mystery.

So how do you describe Ani, the character you play? There are bits of this that come from Jessica's real life. Yeah. How do you explain Ani and what she's up against in this movie? Right. One of the hardest questions to answer, because there's so many things that you don't want to give away. Exactly. That's why I tiptoed around a little bit.

I know. So to me, the best way I can describe her is she, is a young woman living in New York City who's living the perfect Instagram life. She's putting forward all of the things that she thinks that people want to hear and want to see as probably most people can relate to. I mean, I guess you can say like most people on social media put forward a version of themselves real or otherwise that they presume attracts a type of crowd that they want or response that they want. So that's what she does.

The cool thing about her is in the movie is that you get to see who, who she really is, and not just who she is, but how she got to where she is, which is what the layers, I think, of her. So there's a part of her that's like really fun to play because it's a juxtaposition of what she does actively versus what she's thinking, and you get to see and hear both.

So it's like, it's my complicated way of saying, she's a really fun, complicated character, but one that ultimately will make sense. Well, to explain it, like the voiceover that we'll hear immediately contradicts what she then says. But there's times when it doesn't. Yes. And so that's like a little bit of the fun cat and mouse game that she plays within herself,

like which one of these is the real me. So I think, you know, which one's going to win and which one's going to catch up. But I think it's a fun character to try to anticipate, which is what I think we were trying to do with the ending. Because we changed the ending from the book to the movie. Right. Which will be interesting to people who love the book when they get there. To see what they think of this.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's, again, without being too specific, There's a lot of trauma in her past that she has to confront that sort of defines her life and defines her future relationships. Was that a hard thing to get into because it is very serious trauma on a couple of different counts? Do you like playing a character who's got all that depth? Yeah. You know, I've always thought, I've struggled this with myself. Do I give you a real answer?

I give you the answer that I think people want to hear. Now, give me the real one. The real one is no. Like, it's all fun. Like, I really genuinely look at acting as play pretend. The other answer I can give you is, yes, this was really hard for me, and it was emotionally draining, and I'm such a great act. I can go on and on with the answer that I think I'm supposed to give.

But the truth is, I love to play pretend. I do. I think in a different time I would have been, like, a psychologist or studying people's behavior, human behavior. Like, I love that. So to me, I look at scripts and characters as just a study of human behavior. And I love that. I've also, so I've been doing this now for 30 years, right?

And I've always said that who I am and what I do are two very different things. It's not to say that once you trick your body into going through a traumatic experience, you know that it's not real in your head, but your body physically feels like it's real. So there's a part of you that at the end of the day is exhausted. But that being said, I can separate the two pretty well. So as hard as it is, I'm not in a ditch. I'm not in a mind. I'm okay.

Like, it's not that hard. Some of the scenes are hard to watch. So I'm thinking this must be hard for you, even if you're playing pretend, to act out. They have to be. It's, the idea of a doing seems much harder

than the actual technical nature of it because it is broken down into so many different fragments. It's never one, or rarely is it one long experience of that traumatic experience. It's oftentimes broken into sub-fragments of the shot.

So you feel like you're a little bit detached from experiencing the whole thing until you shoot the wide, call it. And then you have to experience the whole thing all at once. Yeah. So as I mentioned, some of this trauma is real to Jessica, to the author and who also wrote the screenplay, as you said. Did that give this some added significance, taking care of her story in some way? Yes. Yeah. What was interesting was the parts, while we were shooting it, the parts that were triggering for her to be on

set for were not the parts that you would have thought. So it's not the obvious is my best way. There's two very traumatic sequences in the film. One of them, both of them were not the traumatic experiences that she was not on the set for. That's interesting. Yeah. I know.

It's not what you anticipate it being because it's different triggering moments. Like when you go through this type of experience, there's different moments that trigger you that people don't anticipate that being the moment. And some of those experiences that are laid out in the movie, again, we're tap dancing around it. We know. Well, we should, though. People need to go see it. You know what we're talking about. We'll use code word.

Thank you. Are we going to be familiar to some people, you know, and painful to people. And in one case, more and more to young people, unfortunately. At a places where they think they're safe, was that part of the story important to you to put out there and to relay that these are very real things that, especially young people face right now. Yes. It's interesting. Oh, God, how'd I answer this without giving away what it is?

We're trying. I think about it every time that. I think about it every day. How about that? I think about it every day, but my husband doesn't. He doesn't worry about the possibility of that every day, and I do. And it's like this weird thing that I don't know if it's a social, like a social study or whatever it is, but human behavior. I genuinely worry about that every day.

And he's like, the likelihood is not that possible. I'm like, but it's not impossible. Right. And so, you know, so it was important because I think that it's really real. And I think a lot of people can relate to it, sadly. I'm not saying that in a positive way. We were talking about our kids before. For me, too, kids my age, it's so real.

I mean, because since the day they were born, it's been out there. It's been part of their lives. Stepping into school can be dangerous sometimes, potentially. Ashton's right. The odds are against it. But it is out there and it's something they prepare for. But that's the scary part is like they do for us. It's earthquake drills, fire drills, and then other drills, right?

And that's the other that I'm like, I didn't pull up with the other. I didn't. No. Well, none of us did. It's a relatively new phenomenon, but it's very real for them. You get a lot of stuff come across your desk with your production company and everything else. I'm curious how you decide what kind of project. is worth this kind of investment.

Clearly, this is a big investment of your time and effort. You've got kids at home. We've got a lot going on. How do you choose, yes. That's the thing I want to do in this case. I wish that there was a formula because it would probably make everyone's life much easier and the guessing game much quicker.

I look at it as this reason enough for me to not be home for dinner every night. That's the first thing I do, right? So I guess if the question is like, what justifies that? The people involved, I think I really love working in a really fun environment, regardless of it being a comedy, drama, thriller, or horror, I think the environment has to be right.

The people I work with, the characters, and who's this movie for, or who's this project for? And if I can't answer that, then there's no point of doing it. Like, if I'm not, like, honestly, there's no point of me leaving my kids. I love being home. And there's such a range of it, too. You'll do something hilariously funny and something very deeply serious. You want to entertain or ed. You want to give a little spoonful of medicine with a whole,

whole bunch of sugar or you just want to just give some sugar like just drink your mountain do and half on like there are and it's okay to want to do that and I'm like I'm at a place where I'm so like that's what I'm trying to find desperately right now is just an incredible comedy like a great romantic comedy because I to be honest my husband did one uh last what year time last year earlier this year earlier this year I don't know with Reese Witherspoon and I watched this and I was like that's that's what I want to do next Give me one of those. Yeah.

Mine is hopeful and as beautiful as lucky as girl is, and I hope people watch it, we do need more relief. Like, not everything needs to be Game of Thrones. Well, I can tell you, speaking of giving people relief, I showed my 13-year-old son Ted for the first time of the night. Oh, God. You're welcome. It was a revelation to him. Is it not amazing? It's amazing.

I know. Ted was a wonderful, obnoxious movie. What, like, that's what we need more of. Totally. I know. And I had street cred because I said, You know, I'm going to interview her in a few days. You are?

Did he like it? He loved it. He did. He's got a pretty sharp sense of humor. It's so good. And I think during COVID, all the rules of, like, language went out the window in terms of shows and movies and all that. By the way, same. Except we have six and eight.

And we were like, you know what? It's just words. Go ahead. We tried for a while. I don't know if you should watch that. And then we had two years to fill. So we're like, forget it. Whatever you want.

Yeah. We're into the TED movies. Oh, yeah. Because there's a lot of cursing on that. And I was like, me. Whatever. What are you going to do? What are you going to do?

One of the, another long-term effect of COVID. Exactly. Well, congratulations on the movie. It's just incredible. Thank you. I also want to congratulate you on the work you've done for Ukraine. Thank you. This year for your home country.

Yeah. That must have been a shock to your family, a shock to your system when Russia decided to go in and do what it did. And then you sort of turned around and said, what do I do about this? So it wasn't. shock. I think what's more shocking is the fact that people were surprised that this happened. This is not based on intelligence that I have when my family has. It's solely based on Putin said he was going to do something. And we've ignored it for so long. Like, Kasparov talks about it beautifully. He's been screaming at other countries for 20 plus years. Like, this man is going to do these things.

And everybody's kind of looked the other way. So when this all kind of went down, I don't think we were surprised, but I don't know if we anticipated, there was like a little lag before anybody knew what to do, and that's maybe we didn't anticipate. It was like the first 48 hours where nobody knew what to do or how to help or what's going to happen. And by the, neither did we realistically, because you don't ever know when there's a war, what problem you're fixing. You don't know if you're rebuilding or if you're rescuing, right? Like, you just don't know where this thing's going. And so for us in those 48 hours, I think we looked at it as how do we solve a problem today for today, not a problem in anticipation of the next two, three months, because

we didn't know what was going to happen. And you raised for people to know tens of millions of dollars for the people of Ukraine. It's devastating and it's awful. On the one hand, of course. On the other hand, the world has watched and seen what Ukraine is about and how brave the people are. And I imagine that's some source of pride to you and your family to get to be on that stage in the world to see it. It is. I mean, it's great. I have more pride now than I ever have about being from Ukraine because I've never actually cared where I came from. It was always irrelevant. I, in fact, told people that I was Russian because most people didn't know the difference between Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Poland. And so I kept going, it's that red dot. Like, it's just easier for me to go. It's Russia. Because when I left was 91, it just started at the fall. So I technically left when it was Russia. So I came to the States and I was like, where are you from? And I was like, Russia, Russia, Russia. This war here. hits and I was like, I am not Russian. I am from Ukraine, but I speak Russian. I don't speak Ukrainian. So yeah, I mean, there's pride in regards to like the country fighting back and all

that, but it's the worst reason to ever find pride. Right, right. That's, you don't want to have to come by it that way. But the, I mean, it also has to be inspiring to see the way the United States and the West have rallied to the back of Ukraine and help push Russia out. Yes. I think that it's, We're in a time where there's massive repercussions to democracy should Russia win. I think there's other issues that can trickle out from that. That would be catastrophic for the West. So, yes, I'm very happy they stepped up. Yeah.

But I think that it's a bigger problem than just that problem over there when it comes to those two countries. Yeah. Long history. And as you say, Putin started this in 2014 and has talked about it for 30. Yes. 30 years as a central goal of piecing back together the Soviet Union. Yes. I mean, he's literally said what he's wanted to do.

Yeah. So I don't think that we should be surprised. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Stick around to hear more from Milakunis right after the break. Welcome back. Now more of my conversation with Milakunis. You talked about leaving when you were seven in 1991. The story is amazing.

I was reading again, $250. Your parents tell you you're moving down the street. Right? Yeah. Filthy liars they were. But yes. Next thing you know, you landed in New York. Queens.

Yes. Queens, New York. And you had no idea where you were going. What was next for you? No. What was your first move? You get to L.A. You got to learn English, I think.

First, we were Queens for a couple weeks to do all, like, the health check and paper check. Like, I think that was, like, the new version to call it Ellis Island. What do we do after that? We landed in L.A. It was something like February. 17th and February 18th, they started school. Wow. So it was my, yeah, you were just like thrown into it as quickly as you could.

It's like dropping a kid on the moon saying good luck. But we all dropped ourselves on the moon. So it was like my parents were on the moon. We were all on the moon and we were like just don't fall into that crater. Like good luck. Right. Yeah. Right.

And you learned English as most people should. Price is right. Wheel of Fortune. Primetime game shows mostly. Yes. Sometimes a little naked night, you know, a little I Love Lucy, played a role into this. Some cheers, if I recall. Good taste. Yeah, I did. I feel like I caught up with the American culture very quickly at a very young age. Very, very quickly, because I love television. Like, I love TV. I love watching television.

Yeah. And I love watching TV when I was little because I didn't have it and then I had it. And at seven, I was like, what is this box? And my parents were like, watch it. Like, it's okay. Like, there was no restriction because it's not like, I mean, I don't think we knew about television and restrictions or technology. They're like, you go ahead, enjoy it.

Yeah. So I watched a lot of TV growing up. It's like you'd walked into a candy store after having no candy. Like a drug store, like a candy crack cocaine store. And then it was my television. And then I got somehow, it was, we saw Nick at Night. We couldn't afford cable, but somehow magically Nick at Nip. night you would get. And so I got, I cut up on all like 50, 60, 70s, 80s shows really quickly.

Yeah. So like my trivia game for like old content, oddly surprisingly better than it should be giving my age. I want to go to bar night, bar trivia night with you. Yeah, exactly. Trivian night. And I'm like, I got you on three's company. Like I got you. Oh, yes. Were you like a Chrissy, a Janet. Did you have a pick on? I think we were all a little bit of everything. I mean, that's probably more of a Jack, but you know. Yeah. I mean, I mean, But to get into acting, right, to help with your confidence, I guess, and to learn some English. Yeah.

And then it turns into Barbie commercials and pay less shoes commercials and all those things. So at what point... Baywatch. Let's not forget Baywatch. That's like... I watched a great scene just this morning of you warning some young people of a... I think a brush fire on the way. Thank you. Oh, was I blind?

You were feeling the heat. Yeah, you were blind. Because I was blind. You felt the heat. But let me tell you, I played two different characters on Baywatch. And the first time I was on it, I played a different role of a... young girl who saves her class from being something. I don't remember, drowning maybe.

And then I came back the next season and I was blind. Wow. And they're just hoping nobody noticed. No one noticed. It was television, 37 years ago. Nobody cared. No, 37 years ago. Yeah.

So that's sort of like a way into the culture and to learn the language and all those things. So at what point does acting, obviously, you get that 70s show. But you said even after that, you were like, well, we'll be done with this. 18 and then on to real life. And your parents probably felt that way too. So at what point was it like, oh, this is my career? This isn't just like a hobby I have as a teenager. This is what I'm doing. When I wanted to drop out of college. That'll do it. And I, it's so funny we just talked about this weekend. I went, I attempted to go to college for a hot second. Loyola Merramount. Loyola Merrmount. Yep. And I never quite got there because the traffic from where Laola

my amount is because I had to go to work every day at 10 a.m. It wasn't like I was doing it off season. Like I, you know, I would have to take a 6 a.m. class in order to be in the car by 8 in order to sit on one of the freeways to get in, you know, to work on time and not get in trouble. And I was like, I can't do that. And so I was like, okay, what do I choose? Do I choose 70s or where do I choose college? And I was like, oh, choose 70s. So I started crying and I had to go to my parents and I had to ask them if it was okay that I defer because I plan on still going to college. And they're like, you know, we had a long talk and And they're like, okay, but if you do this, you have to focus, and this has to be your thing.

And I was like, cool, gotcha. At 27, my dad comes to me and goes, look, I have been paying this deference fee for some time now. Can we stop? And I was like, yeah, we can stop. So it was like a double thing, 18 and 27. And what was, what happened to 27 that made you say to yourself? That was, I'm good. I'm good.

And what happened? I was like, I don't want to go back to college. I was like, I have TED Talk. I have YouTube. I have books. I can constantly continuously keep learning and be curious. the last thing I want to do is go to college. I was like pass, hard pass, hard pass.

And you got smart anyway, right? Well, I can fake it. I can fake it. You present as intelligent. It's a nice facade. Speaking of that 70s show, you guys are doing a scene for this new 90s show. Yeah, we did it. What was the decision like?

Any hesitation or like, let's go do it? Honestly, there was a little hesitation. There was? From one of us. I will not say, which. One of us was like, I don't know if this is what we should do. Because we're married in real life and now it's weird. Like, it's weird. Like, it's not funny. It's not cute. I like, we're married. We're together 10 years. And so we're like, this is too much. It's too, like, it's why can't do this. Then the other person was like, no, we're doing this. It's the right thing to do. So very quickly, the other person won. And we were like, okay, let's do this. We're going to do one scene. We're going to together. We're spoiler alert, play a married couple in it. And it's going to be great. I've never been more nervous in my life.

Really? Than the day that we had to shoot that scene. Now why? Oh my God, because it's my husband. It was so weird to look at him and not be like, why are you doing that funny face? Or for him not to look at me and be like, why are you acting? Like, there's a part of you that after being, you can call BS on someone.

But here you're acting. So I really respect any actors that are together for an insanely long time. time and can work together and not laugh at one another. Like I couldn't laugh. I couldn't look at him. I started laughing. Like those, I, I just was like, this is so weird. And we were, it's trippy because we were in the same house, like the, you know, stage. And it takes place in the same basement. It takes place in the same kitchen. And Deborah Joe and Kurtwood Smith were the same. But we're old and married and have children. And I was like, oh my God. It was like being in twilight zone. It was very, very weird.

Because if it's your husband or wife, you're looking, go, oh, you're acting. Exactly. That's not how you act. Exactly. It's not how you behave. Exactly. And you have to be like, oh, wait, no, but we're acting. So it's okay.

We're acting. And then I would look at him and be like, like, I just, I couldn't. I was like a child. So it's probably best you just dipped in for a scene rather than like a full run on the show, on the new show. There's no, there's no way. People are desperate for him and I to work together. and I don't know why, and I keep telling people, that's a horrible idea. Like, that is just a horrible idea.

I notice you're asked that almost every time you sit down with someone. People want this to happen. They really do it once, put it to bed. You get it. Watch 90 show, y'all. You'll get to see us be together. And let me know if it's something you want to continue to keep watching. Sounds like your read is the audience.

I think we're good. We're good. Yeah. But I'm so proud of it. By the way, 90-so is very cute. Bonnie came back for it. So our original creators came back for it. It's really good.

It's really, really good. Speaking of your long, illustrious career, I can't believe you just started your 20th season on Family Guy. I know. 20 seasons. Could you ever have dreamed when you stepped into the booth to be Meg the first time? No, given the fact that we were canceled twice? No.

No, I did not presume that we were going to ever be on air ever again. Ever again. We're canceled at one point for like two years, I think. This doesn't happen anymore. It doesn't happen. We are so lucky. I mean, I'm so lucky. By the way, speaking of COVID, all of I moved into my house.

So I record from home. So I no longer even have to go to record somewhere else. I record from my little studio at home. It wasn't the closet for the first year and a half. And then Ashton got me a little recording studio. He got me out of the closet. He was like, you need to get out of his closet. I don't think you're going back into a studio anytime soon.

So he built me a little recording studio. So you really don't need to leave the house. I mean, you have this figured out. I mean, but I do need to leave the house. Like, that's not, no, no, I'm leaving, I went out for drinks in New York yesterday. There you go. Yeah, that was exciting. Was it?

It was really expensive. Oh, things have gotten more expensive. Yeah, yeah, it is, I was like, that's a, that's an expensive martini that I just had. Yeah, no, they, and they don't blink. Like, yeah, that's $30. Yes. What? It was interesting.

Yeah, so I have two of them just to make sure that I wasn't crazy about the price. I was like, yep, that is the price. Stick around for more. of my conversation with Milakunis right after a quick break. Welcome back now to the rest of my conversation with Milakunis. Speaking of things in your basement, Ashton's training for the New York City Marathon, which is amazing and doing it for such a great cause. Having done this last year, I know that it puts some strain on the partner in the relationship.

Thank you. My wife's like, where are you going now? Thank you. I'll be gone for six hours running through the woods. Oh, okay. How's it been for you? for understanding. Thank you. Thank you for feeling my feelings with me. Um, husband. Okay, all jokes aside, it's been actually really great. Yeah. But he is, he's very committed to it.

So I was so like we went on a road trip. He ran, whatever the training schedule was. He ran wherever we were, regardless rain or shine. Like, we were in the middle of nowhere. He was like, I'll be back. You got this. You'll pack up the van. You'll feed the kids. You got this, babe. I'll be back in two hours. And I'm like, have a great run, babe. But he's, He's been really, he's trying really hard to make sure that the runs, like your long runs when you train. Yeah. He does them at like five in the morning. Right.

So he tries to be conscious just to not like kill the day. And because we'll never see him. Those are no joke. Like the 20 mile peak. Your long runs. Yeah. Yeah. That's.

So, but I just thank you for. Thank you. And you'll be there cheering him along. Yes. Good. We're going to try to figure out like the little stops along the way. Yeah. And give them some, you know, those gels.

Oh, yeah. Jells. Oh, yeah. So I'm going to be the gel passer. Great. Okay. And they do have, like, ample stations along the way. There's Gatorade, there's water.

You can even get gels at certain places. So the runners are well taken care of. Lots of things with the running that I learned. Lots of things. There's like, it's a whole, it's a community. It doesn't need to be on air, but we'll talk about it. Nipples. Oh.

Oh, the Chaffee. Yeah. So my husband, okay, I have an almost six-year-old and an almost eight-year-old. My husband goes to me after like three months of training or two, whatever it is, and goes, hey, babe, do you get any of that nipple cream from when he used to nurse? And I was like, used to nurse. I was like, we have big children. He goes, do you have like any, like, nipple cream? And I went, no, I don't have random nipple cream laying around the house. Yeah, I kept it in case of an emergency. You never know when my nipples will shave.

And so we had to go to the store and he had to buy nipple cream. Oh, I know that cream. And that's like a whole thing. That's a thing that people don't talk about unless they're marathon runners or long distance runners. You can take care of it, though, with a good bomb. Like, it doesn't turn into a disaster. I know. Because it can be bad.

But it was really bad because he didn't have the nipple cream. So that was the thing I learned. And then I learned about compression socks. Very important. You're touching all the bases. That's all the stuff. There's also the, in addition to the nipel. There's something that looks like deodorant. Get that on your thighs a little bit because there's

going to be some thigh chafing. There's a lot going on. I won't go any further than that. It's almost like the secret society. It's like the what women talk about doing birthing. Right. Because I feel like the runner's conversation. You're a runner. I'm a runner. What's like what do you use? Like what's the cream? What's your favorite gel? And you're like, oh my God, I'm getting out of this conversation. And then you go to the running store for the first time. Oh, I went with him once. You had no idea how much stuff you need. It's the socks. It's everything. It's the insoles, the socks, the socks. The socks. The They have lots of accoutrements. It's the socks.

It's the watch. It's the Strava. The watch was like a whole thing. Oh, my God, this watch. I think we spent 30 minutes in the damn store where I was like, do you want the, you know, the one, the two or the three? Well, what is the one? I just need to track it and then also know what, like my mileage. But this one also will.

I was like, just get that damn watch. Like, who cares? You'll use it for, no. You can go bananas. It's like this one has the three. D graphics. So you can see the terrain. Yeah, the terrain that you're on.

And he was like, well, maybe I'd do it. I'd be like, you're running one marathon. Get the cheapest version of this Garmin watch. And he's like, well, there's that four. And that looks real nice over there. And I was like, ah. I know. And then once you're in, even if it is one time, you're a little bit in the

runner's world. Like he'll keep running next year. He'll disappear. Like, once you're on a marathon? I ran a marathon. And then I'll see you in 20 minutes because it's a conversation that it arrives. It's very cute. And then you'll hear like, oh, you did great in your?

New York, try Berlin, try Chicago. Like, you're, they try to suck you in. It is cute. It's amazing. It's amazing. It's very sweet. I told you it was one of the best days in my life. And hopefully it will be for him and for you guys.

And then maybe you'll run a marathon. No. Never. Never. Okay. You shut that down real quick. Like, don't chase me because the likelihood of me running is slim to none. Like, I will just, I will be like, I'm sorry.

You have me. Like, you win. I, I just, I, my body's not meant. I love Pilates. I love spinning. I love hiking. The act of like, on a pavement?

Why? Why would I do that to my body? That seems, like, the runner's high, I wish that I understood it. I wish I had it. There is a pounding to the feet and the knees. And the knees. And my hips? Yeah.

No. What I will say is, but you probably get this from Peloton too or whatever else you do, is it does just, like, take you away for an hour. And you put on a podcast or music or whatever. It's a great, I feel intense. Which I get the, the, like, the, checking out for an hour. I get it. But I just don't need to do it in traffic with like for 26 miles. Oh my God, yeah. How do you keep yourself motivated? Like, I mean, that's a whole other conversation,

but like the idea of like the monotony, I guess you do get in this rhythm. You have to almost like meditate yourself into a run. That to me is super intriguing is the concept of just like zoning into this like methodical movement. Yeah. It's the people on the route too, honestly. Big crowds, cheering you on and keep you going. Yeah. But it is cool to do a thing that for me anyway, maybe Ashden feels that way, a thing you never thought you could do in a million years. I'm going to run a marathon. That's him once a year. And then you did it. Yes, he does, like, that is his, he's never going to be, he's never complacent. It's like, never enough. Like, he's like, I can learn. I'm so curious about physics. And then next thing, you know, he's like in an MIT course, just like deep diving into physics. I love that, though. You both are. You're both curious.

Smart and curious, I would say. I never want to not be curious. I found that that to me is like my biggest fear is to not be curious. I don't need to know everything. By all means, I sit on stupid Mountain. If you ever read an Adam Grant book, this makes complete sense. I am on, I'm queen of stupid Mountain. But I love being curious. I love learning. I love asking questions. I don't need to know everything. I just want to learn. Yeah. That's a good way to be. Yeah. So what are you curious about in your career next? You said you want to do a great romantic comedy? Is that what we're looking at next? Yeah. And then I'm also, I want to do a card game. Like ultimately, we're building out an IP called Armour Kingdom that we're super, like my company and I are doing, that is, you can go and read the comic books online now and we're going to be releasing like five chapters of the comic book or

you know in the series and then we're going to do hopefully an animated show and then we're currently in beta doing like a card game with it that's a digital card game yeah so I love gaming which is weird because my kids aren't really allowed to game so I'm a little bit of a hypocrite but I do love gaming and um and so I was I've always been curious with web 3 how do you combo up or it doesn't matter with the internet how do you combo up gaming and and and make it, like fingerprint it almost. Yeah. Yeah.

That's so cool. Yeah. Looking at the future. What games do you play? What are you a big gamer? I don't, I don't play anything. I honestly have stopped playing many, many, many years ago. The only thing that we just recently started, that's a whole other segment is Mario Kart.

Sure, with the wheel. He's with the story behind how this happened. So my kid was like, what, it goes on a play date. Of course, that other kids got a switch. My kid comes home, and he's like, I want to switch. And I was like, oh, that's nice. Like, that's cute. You should get a switch.

And when you're older, you can do this. And he's like, we're going to earn a switch. And I was like, we can own a switch. So we set our kids down. We wrote out all of the, like, for if you clean up poop, you get like $1.50. If you make it, like, everything written out of how they're going to earn their money. We were nine months into earning money, okay? They were doing a great job.

They were, like, more than halfway there. But they were like, they did a little bit ways to go. We go and buy a lotto ticket in Iowa. in Iowa. My husband, we don't have a gas car. So when we rent cars, he's always like, when he gets gas, he's like, oh, let me go run in and grab a lot of food. So he runs in to go grab a lotto ticket for all of us. So it's like our four, last four, and then his parents, so it's six tickets.

Get some stupid lotter tickets. Our kids have never seen it. They're like, what is this? We're like, you're not going to win anything, but it's fun to scratch. Don't worry about it. My kid wins $200. No. $200 on a lotot ticket, like those scratch offs.

And instantly, he's like, switch! And I was like, God damn it. Like my whole thing of him earning this switch out the window. So we got the switch. Oh, my gosh, maybe a month ago, a little less than a month ago. And how's that going? And we all love it is the problem. Yeah. So we play it on the weekend.

And you can play as a family. We do play. So that's like it is communal. And they're not allowed to play it by themselves. They're only allowed to play it on the screen projected with all of us. So there's no, like, isolated play. But it was the con. There was this concept of like, earn the switch.

Just earn it. And then he just, I mean, it was, yeah. Next thing you know he's going to be going to the track with Ashton. Well, that's what everybody said, like, betting the ponies. Yeah, take him to Vegas. Be like, call it, red or black, red or black, call it. Oh, my God, that's amazing.

It's so good to see you. Thank you. Good luck with the marathon. Congratulations on the movie. And good luck with your little gambling child. I know. Thank you. That was fun.

Thanks, Milo. Yeah, for sure. My thanks again to Mila for a great conversation, even the part about Ashton's chafing. She is always so much fun to talk to. You can check out luckiest girl alive streaming on Netflix on Friday, October 7th. My thanks to all of you for listening again this week. If you want to hear more of these conversations with my guests every week, be sure to click follow so you never miss an episode. And don't forget to tune in to Sunday today every weekend on NBC.

I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you right back here next week. on the Sunday Sit Down Podcast.