Mila Kunis has been praised for her response to being booed multiple times during a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Last week, New York-native Jimmy Kimmel returned to his hometown to host a series of shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House, where Kunis promoted her new Netflix film, Luckiest Girl Alive. After Kunis spoke about a wardrobe malfunction that happened right before the show, Kimmel told the Black Swan actor: “You seem like you could be a New Yorker, but you’re not a New Yorker.”
“No, I’m not,” she confirmed, followed by a subtle boo from an audience member.
“What? Who booed?” Kunis asked the audience, before jokingly apologising to the New York crowd.
“Well, you won’t like the rest of this interview,” she added.
The Friends With Benefits star went on to share a story about her family’s brief stay in New York when they first moved to the United States from Ukraine.
“I was born in Ukraine but when I came to the states, I came through New York,” she said, with cheers from the audience.
“Except, I think it was, like, Queens,” Kunis continued. “And then you’re put up in a hotel to go through your medical checks to make sure you can be entered into the country. But it’s next to a cemetery, this is what I remember.”
While Kunis could only recall a cemetery across the street from the “weird” hotel she was in with her family, she did remember that it was the first time she ever had a burger and Coca-Cola soda.
“What I recall is a cemetery across the street and this weird hotel that I was in, but I did have a burger for the first time in New york and a Coca-Cola,” she said.
Kimmel noted that Kunis had a “pretty great memory”, before asking whether she had pizza for the first time in New York as well.
“Are you ready?” Kunis said, anticipating more boos from the crowd of New Yorkers in the audience. “No.”
Kunis was then teased by the audience for her opinions on pizza, but tried to make up for it by sharing that her father worked as a Dominos Pizza delivery man when they moved to Los Angeles, California. However, that only elicited more boos from the audience, who suggested that New York pizza is superior to the pies in Los Angeles.
The That ’70s Show alumna went on to say that due to her father’s job, she grew to hate pizza because it was all her family ate at the time. Of course, the admission prompted a “symphony of boos” from the crowd, to which Kunis got up from her seat and jokingly said, “I’m out of here!” before sitting back down.
“I had it every day for a year, possibly more,” she explained. “It was too much. Because we were so poor, my dad would make us pizza for dinner, and he tried really hard to get creative but you can only be so creative.”
“My brother came out of it loving pizza and my mom and I to this day are like, ‘Ugh, pizza,’” she added. “I’ll choke it down because my kids like pizza, my husband likes pizza, but I’m never the person that goes, ‘You know what I feel like? Pizza.’”
However, Kunis’ husband and notorious prankster, Ashton Kutcher, decided to give his wife a pizza oven for their anniversary. “But here’s the irony, guys. My husband for our anniversary got me a pizza oven,” she said, laughing. “Now not only do I not like pizza, I make them!”
Kunis’ appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live was praised by fans online for her “comedic timing” and easygoing attitude when faced with boos from the crowd.
“Mila Kunis is one of the funniest and most down to earth celebrities,” one fan wrote on Twitter. “Her whit is also impressive. I love her comedic timing when the crowd started the boo’s she handled it like a boss. Great interview.”
“If you boo Mila Kunis, you are not my people,” another fan tweeted.
Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher were married in 2015 and share two children – Wyatt, seven, and Dimitri, five. Earlier this year, the couple raised nearly $35m for Ukrainian refugees amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country.
Because of her humanitarian efforts, Mila Kunis was recently included on Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people of 2022.
