Long before Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher started their rom-com-like real relationship, the two played love interests on That '70s Show. Kunis had her first kiss with Kutcher on the show, and it was particularly awkward for both of them, Kutcher told Howard Stern today on his radio show.
They had a brother/sister relationship, he explained: "I was 19, she was like 14. Yeah, I did her chemistry homework for her. I think I was her first kiss, like, on the show. We have our first kiss memorialized on a TV show!"
"It was really weird. I was like, 'Isn't this illegal? Like can I-am I allowed?'" He continued. "It was really awkward because I'm like a 19-year-old kid." At the time, he had no physical attraction to her. "She was 14! She was like my little sister. I wanted to make sure she was okay."
But he doesn't really buy her claims that she didn't find him attractive then. "She's lying! She has like, a journal or like, a diary from when she was a kid where she wrote, 'Oh, this guy's hot.' She thought I was cute!"
"At first I think she thought that I was good looking, and then shortly thereafter, I was just annoying to her, because I was like a big brother," he clarified. "It was like, 'He's annoying, because he's always looking out for my best interest.'" (Okay, Ashton...)
Kutcher also divulged how their actual relationship started—the one that was basically their rom coms No Strings Attached (Kutcher)and Friends With Benefits (Kunis) IRL. "We legitimately lived out our movies," he said. "It was weird and fast and—you know at the time it was honestly like okay, we're going to be in this—we have an agreement around [our friends with benefits relationship]."
Kunis may or may not have deployed a clever play to get Kutcher to kiss her on the night of his housewarming party. "I think I was smoking cigarettes at the time, and I was still a smoker," Kutcher said. "And she had quit smoking and she was like, she wanted me to like shot gun a cigarette smoke so she could breathe it in and I was like, 'All right.' And I started doing this. And gradually through the night, it got closer and closer and closer."
"You know, she missed smoking," Kutcher said, refusing to admit that she just did that to get him to kiss her. Though he conceded, "I think it was pretty mutual. It was kind of obvious that things were happening."
Kunis told Stern her account of that night before. "I brought a girlfriend with me [to the housewarming party]. I was like, "You have to come with me, because just in case," she said. "So lo and behold he [Kutcher] was trying to set me up with a friend of his…[a] not actor-famous friend. And so I didn't know this. So I walk in—but I literally was like, "Why am I nervous?"...There was less talking [more action that started things with us]. I didn't know that I was supposed to meet his friend until much later."
And so their real love story started.
Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she's not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.
