The sky is about to open up on her early-morning walk, but Mila Kunis isn’t worried about the coming storm. She gives zero effs about hair falling flat or mascara running or jeans growing sodden and weighing heavily on her hips. Moreover, Kunis has little patience for delicate flowers who fret about getting drenched. After all, “It’s just rain.”
Fleeing religious persecution, her family emigrated from Ukraine when Kunis was 7 years old, with just $250 in their pockets. Because of this and a naturally resilient, suffer-no-fools disposition, she understands that life is full of challenge and sorrow and that a spot of precipitation during a stroll is neither.
“It is what it is,” she asserts in her rat-a-tat-tat style, marching directly toward the darkening clouds, hair in a loose ponytail, the tiniest spot of concealer on her chin. Kunis, 34, speaks freely and loudly as she navigates the Atlanta BeltLine, an urban walking path that winds through the city she’s calling home while she shoots A Bad Moms Christmas, the sequel to 2016’s raw, endearing ensemble comedy Bad Moms—a film, like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the upcoming The Spy Who Dumped Me (with Kate McKinnon), that showcases Kunis’ slapstick chops and everywoman accessibility. As the first drops fall, she pops open a small umbrella, quickly veering into a story about her rental house and how yesterday a lightning storm felled a tree in her yard.
“It should’ve fallen onto three homes. The fact that it didn’t was unbelievable.” She seems genuinely thrilled by the near miss. “We could get struck by lightning any second. So why worry? There’s something so empowering about being, ‘Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen.’ Over the past four or five years, I’ve realized how much I enjoy that feeling.”
Here, a few highlights from her November cover interview, on newsstands October 17:
On the hurdle of making women-centric content in Hollywood:
“I do sometimes come back from work like, ‘What the f*ck?’ But anger is good. It motivates us to strive to be better.”
On going from self-proclaimed “spiraler” to Zen master:
“I overthink. I’m super-dramatic. Something not that bad, in my mind, becomes a catastrophe. I go from zero to a hundred. It’s a problem.”
On what motherhood has taught her:
“What motherhood shows you is how selfless you can get. I’m ragged tired. Who cares? My kids are healthy, I’m happy.’”
On what she wants to teach her daughter:
“What I want my daughter to learn from me is the value of hard work.”
On power versus success:
“The real question is: Does power equal success? I mean, look at Trump. Trump is powerful. It doesn’t mean he’s successful, right?”
On today’s political landscape and her hope for the future:
“I have hope for the future. None of this is permanent, this is a phase…and we will come out of it as a country.”
Read the full interview and see more photographs in the November issue of Marie Claire, on newsstands October 17.
Featured video music: "You Are Life" by Gia Sky