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It's fairly obvious to any sane individual that the 1970s were not exactly the most attractive decade. Polyester, giant collars, ankle-breaking platform shoes, and feathered hair were all laughable results of the '70s, regardless of any retro-hip status they've achieved. So you know that if we're considering getting in a time machine and jetting back to 1976, something impressive must have happened.
My, my, it's Mila!
Impressive, thy name is Mila Kunis.
Mila plays Jackie Burkhardt on Fox's That '70s Show, and as far as we're concerned, it can be the 1970s for the rest of eternity, as long as she's somewhere to be found. Jackie is a spoiled princess, but she's such an adorable one that we can forgive her every time. She's like your best friend's little sister -- even though she drives you crazy, you secretly can't wait to come home after college and find her all grown up.
When Fox announced they'd be showing all new episodes of That '70s Show during the summer, a notoriously boring time for network TV, we knew we had to talk to the cutest 15-year-old the '70s didn't produce. Hopefully you caught the first new episode of the summer when it aired June 14th. Future original episodes will air on these Monday nights: June 21 and July 12, 19, and 26. Even better, they'll be followed by a rerun episode.
Only eight years ago, Mila and her family moved to the United States from Russia. She learned English and started taking acting classes, where she was discovered by her manager. Now, at the tender of 15, she's built an impressive resume, stars in a hit show, and Fox tells us she's been cast to voice Meg on next season's Family Guy. Editor Leah Reich got the chance to ask her what we're all wondering: What's it like to be a 15-year-old who spends half the year as a sassy girl on a hit Fox show and the other half as a regular kid in a public high school?
Leah: Do any of your high school classmates make a fuss about you being on TV? How do they react? Are they cool with it?
Mila: Well, they are now. But when I first started coming to school and when the show became a hit for the most part with teenagers, and everybody started realizing that I'd been going to their school, it was a little weird. I would be in class and people would just start just yelling out, "Oh my god" or "I love you!" The teachers would get disturbed. A lot of my teachers just didn't understand how I could handle it. I think everybody started cooling down about it. Now people, instead of yelling down the hall, they actually come up and talk to me. It's a lot better.
Leah: Do you get guys falling all over you and saying "Oh god, I love you."
Mila: Of course, kissing my feet! No, the guys at my school are really shy.
'Hey, do you think this thing is hot?' Leah: Guys your age are really shy?
Mila: Right, except the obnoxious ones who come up to you and go, "Hey, what's your name? Okay, can I have your number?" Straight out. And I'm like, "You know, I don't think that's possible." And then you have those who follow you for days, and you end up having to talk to them. Like, "Hey, what do you want?"
Leah: Do people recognize you all over the place when they see you?
Mila: It's happening more and more. It's still taking so much time to get used to. I just went to a premier recently, and there were mobs of people taking pictures-half of these pictures I didn't even get. And I was like, how do you get these pictures? I don't even own them! That's probably the weirdest thing I've found. It's so much fun, though, to be recognized. People relate to the show.
Leah: Do you get a lot of people who say, "Oh my god, the show is just like me and my friends"?
Mila: Yes, but of course I get people who are like, "Oh, I hate your character! Stop sleeping around! Why did you get pregnant?" I get advice about relationships. That's the biggest thing. People get me confused with my character. They'll say, "I'm glad you're not pregnant, but next time, use a condom." And I'm like, "Okay."
Leah: Are you at all like Jackie?
Mila: No, not at all. I'm probably the most quiet and shy person you'll ever meet. I'm nothing like my character. I can't relate to her much.
Leah: Is it fun to pretend to be like that just for a change, or is kind of frustrating?
Mila: I like it. It's a completely different world. You get to do things you probably would never be able to do in reality. Unless you want to get caught! You can get away with it on TV. That's the good thing about it. It's a lot of fun -- like a game you play. You know, in kindergarten you play house. One person's the mommy and one person's the daddy. It's the same exact thing.
Leah: So, obviously, you have to deal with some of the same issues that Jackie does in her life. How do you deal with them? Whereas she's going to be crazy and frivolous...
Mila: Or get pregnant!
Leah: How do you deal with it?
Mila: Well, I mean, Jackie's just a very out there character. It seems like she'll do everything the opposite of what an average person will do. Like when she thinks she's pregnant, the first thing that comes to her mind is she can't cheerlead. She doesn't think about having a baby! She cares about not being able to wear high heels and having to mismatch her clothes. For me, God forbid that would ever happen to me, I don't know what I would do. But the last thing I would worry about is cheerleading!
Leah: But it's good to be kind of crazy and kind of wild sometimes, right?
Mila: And that's why I really enjoy playing her! Well, I mean, I have a cute boyfriend on the show, which isn't bad either.
Leah: So, what do you want to do with your career? Do you want to go to college?
Mila: Well, that's the whole reason I'm in school, why I'm not getting a GED. It's a very abnormal thing to do, for a person who's working full-time, but I do want to go to college and I do want to have a back-up career. I find acting is such a gamble. One year you could be on a hit show and do thousands of movies back to back. And then next year? Nobody's going to hear of you.
Leah: Do you have any idea where you want to go?
Mila: UCLA.
Leah: If you could play any role ever, what would you play?
Mila: Well, my favorite show is I Love Lucy, so I would have to say Lucy. I used to think she was such a funny lady. If I'd had the chance to meet her, it would have been the coolest thing.
Leah: What about a movie role?
Mila: From Cruel Intentions -- Reese Witherspoon's character, so I could kiss Ryan Philippe. That would be my dream role! But he got her pregnant!
Leah: Now you can write her fan mail and say, "Next time, use a condom."
Mila: (laughs)
Leah: A fellow editor's little brother is 17, and he said that one week there was a bomb threat every day at his school. Has your school been affected like that by the Columbine High School shootings?
Mila: Here's the thing about my school. Supposedly, it was once one of the most dangerous schools in LA -- it's well-known for violence. You have all these little suburban schools, these little prep schools in the area that get bomb threat after bomb threat. Our school? Nothing. In a little town, sometimes people have to prove themselves. In schools like mine where everybody busses from South Central LA and Inglewood, nobody has to prove to anybody that they're tough.
Leah: Everybody knows everyone else is tough.
Kitty teaches Jackie how to bake -- sort of Mila: Five years ago, in my school, we did have a shooting and somebody got shot and killed. And then a couple years ago, a girl shot herself in the bathroom. It's really scary. Our school has dealt with this before, although not on such a huge scale. We have a lot of security. We have four on-campus police officers, if not more.
You know, you spend your childhood in school and you expect that place to be one of the safest places. And it is! It's a school. It's supposed to help teach you how to be responsible, how to be civilized. But then you go to school, and suddenly you have these two savages. You have these kids that are unbalanced, and there's nothing you can do about it. We have guns in our school. It's really weird, we do have gangs, but not in our school, because I don't think our school would allow it. There's too much security going on. But there are kids who carry guns, because they live in neighborhoods where it's absolutely normal. You do get scared.
In my school, the kids respect the teachers highly. You have these teachers that have complete control of the class and can say anything to the student while they have a gun but you know the student will respect them. And then you have these teachers who are afraid of their kids, or who try and demand respect without giving a reason for it, and the kids pretty much rule the class. And that's the scary thing about it.
Leah: And then there's the blame.
Mila: With the media blaming the parents for the kids, and the parents blaming the media, it's not right. You shouldn't blame, because blame is the coward's way out. That's all it is, and it was a horribly sad thing that it occurred in Colorado.
Leah: Do you like school?
Mila: Most of my classes. But Spanish? Definitely not one of my strongest classes. It's because I'm not there much of the time, and it's a language. In English, I'm cool, and in biology, I can read and catch up easily. Spanish is really hard for me to catch up when I'm absent. There's conversations, getting vocal points. That's probably my biggest interference. Everybody else is cool, like my math teacher is really nice. In that sense I've been really lucky with my teachers in the past. They've been very cooperative with everything and with my tutor on the side. When I go back to school, they don't give me special treatment, but they let me slack off once in a while.
Leah: Do you ever find that school and acting get in the way of each other?
Mila: It does get in the way. In the sense that, I love acting and I would never give it up for anything. It's so much fun. It has taught me a lot, and every day I go to work, I learn more and more. How to work with people and just... life. And then I go to school and it's completely different. I have to do logarithms and parabolas and hyperbolas! It's not going to come up in life where I'm walking down the street and then I'm going to say, "Oh, you know what, there's a parabola" or "Hello, that's a quadratic equation!"
Leah: How do you like working on the show?
Mila: Oh, I love it, it's so much fun. Everybody's just so unbelievable.
Leah: As a 15-year-old, it doesn't seem like making a show abut the '70s would be easy.
Mila: I think it was hard for everybody to start out because it's not a '90s show, and I think it was a little weird. The set director and the designers are just unbelievable, and it takes a lot of work, to make it seem like the '70s. And then you have the wardrobe people who really do get authentic '70s stuff. Everything we wear is actually from the '70s. The jeans, the shoes, everything -- all from the 1970s. I think that's amazing. And then you have the hair people who had to look through thousands of magazines, if not more, to find out the styles, and the make-up people who watched American Bandstand for hours and hours.
Leah: How's the cast?
Mila: Everybody's great. I'm the baby, so everybody treats me like their little sister. So even when I begin to talk about guys, they're like, "No, you're too young! He's not cute, he's too old for you!" Ashton and Wilmer are like, "I'd better not be seeing you with a guy ever again!"
Leah: Kind of like extended family.
Mila: Yeah. When we work, we work for pretty much 4 months, 6 months. It really becomes like your first family because you see them 24/7. We really are close. The parents on the show are just fantastic people too. Words can't even explain how great it is to work on this show. I mean, you have Bonnie and Terry Turner and Mark Brazill, David Trainer. We really do have an unbelievable crew.
Leah: Being born after the '70s, in 1983, did you have to do any research into the way things were back then?
Mila: When we got the show, they gave us a bunch of Time magazines from the 70s. Time and the old newspapers, Cosmo for the girls to check what the styles were.
Leah: Do you like the styles?
Mila: For the most part. Not all of them. They were just so tight. They had these funky socks, called tube socks. Oh my god. You wear them with open toe shoes! So that's one thing. But for the most part, I really like it. I think it's more free. Well, it's not really -- my character isn't. She has to match. Her hairband has to match her earrings, her earrings have to match her the shoes, her shoes to her skirt, her skirt to her belt, her belt to her shirt. Completely nuts. But Donna's character, I really like what she wears.
Leah: So, when you're looking for a guy, what are you looking for?
Mila: This is hard. Okay. Tall. Dark. Handsome. (laughs) Blue eyes. Oh, wait, Ryan Philippe. Okay, blonde! Blue eyes. Well built! No, really... He has to be smart, has to be able to hold a conversation, has to have a sense of humor, outgoing but is able to sit home at night and rent a video and just sit together. Sweet, nice -- not like a mama's boy nice, but treats you well. I totally want a guy who speaks his mind. I don't want a guy who, if you start a fight, he'll just agree with you and say, "Whatever you want!" I want to argue. I don't have patience. I want a guy who's able to be nice yet who can stand up for himself. And looks do not matter, truthfully and honestly. Nowadays, I don't care anymore. You see so many handsome, adorably beautiful guys...
Leah: Who are such dorks.
Mila: Idiots! Not a brain in their heads! Nothing.
Leah: Jackie's got a boyfriend. Do you have one in real life?
Mila: No. Single and ready to mingle!
