Bad Moms, one of the summers most anticipated films, at least for moms, will be debuting nationwide on July 29 … NEXT FRIDAY! Earlier this month, while in Los Angles for the Bad Moms Press Junket, we had the opportunity to attend the Bad Moms Social at the beautiful SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills and interview talent from the film – Mila Kunis, Kathryn Hahn, – to learn more about the movie and find out if they really are Bad Moms!
This Junket/Interview session was different from any other that I’ve ever attended and it all started with the actual setup at the event. In most press situations we go into a large conference room and gather around a table or sit in rows of chairs and wait for the talent to arrive so we can attempt to get our questions in. This was SO different! We were taken out onto a large patio where they had numerous tables setup that were covered by umbrellas and finished with table clothes. In front of all of the tables was an outdoor loveseat that was setup for the talent and behind the tables were multiple stations, if you will, holding sweet and savory treats for the attendees. In the back corner of the patio there was a bartender generously pouring mimosas and serving up water, soda, and tea as requested.
After selecting the perfect mimosa and picking up a few nibbles I looked around and found a table with a few familiar faces and joined them. I couldn’t help but feel like I was at a wedding shower or perhaps a baby shower and was settling in with some good fun and conversation with girlfriends.
Moments later I heard a few gasps and giggles and looked up to see Mila Kunis and Kathryn Hahn heading in our direction. Right off the bat I could tell that they were close. My next observation is that they are REAL and it really felt as though were getting ready to sit down with a couple of girlfriends to catch up. Kathryn noticed that we were all sipping on mimosas and quickly gestured to see if she could join in the fun. Mila, absolutely adorable and a few months pregnant, asked for a plain orange juice with a bid of dread and then quickly smirked to indicate her humor. Adorable is the easiest way to describe the two and there were a number of occasions during the interview when Kathryn actually grabbed Mila’s hand and squeezed it. I found this absolutely endearing and wanted to run up and hug them both.
Here is a bit of what we learned during our chat with the two!
I was going to go through and summarize the day. I thought about keeping everything light and fun and summary (haha, see what I did there?) until I read through the transcripts three times. Yes, not once or twice but THREE times. There was so much awesomeness that I had to share their actual words with you all! Also, I want to point out that before the “interview” even began, Mila and Kathryn started off by complimenting us and how beautiful and amazing we all were. It was surreal and a memory that will last a lifetime. Enjoy! — Heather
Question: How did you prepare for your role?
Mila Kunis: It didn’t take much research. I think we all kind of have someone like that in our lives. I just don’t have that in a school atmosphere. I do go to mommy blogs, you know, 60 percent of them are great. Forty percent ends up being like those moms.
For me, I kind of had a little bit of experience through the blogs that I found thoroughly entertaining. I never took it to heart. Everything I saw I was like, wow, these women are crazy. It’s fascinating. It’s really fascinating because somebody will ask a really simple question like in your opinion, I’m getting a new car seat. What’s the best car seat?
You see, the genuine answers, and then you see the moms just going at each other. And it’s great. I mean for entertainment purposes, it’s great. But for real life, ladies, let’s just all relax for one second and be nice to one another.
On a pure entertainment level, that’s kind of how I learned I guess. You deal with it daily.
Question: Female roles in outrageous comedies tend to be relegated to a girlfriend or a sidekick. Did you find it empowering to have a script that was so funny and relatable and written specifically from a female perspective?
Kathryn Hahn: Well, I feel like had I not been lucky enough to be in this movie, I would have been so excited to see it. And I would have started an e-mail chain and got all my mommy pals. I just feel like, so often moms and mommies in movies are kind of painted with like a saintly glow around them.
And we know that that’s just not the truth. We’ve got so much more complexity than anyone so, I was so excited to just to see mommyhood examined from the way that we all know it, or at least would love to experience. I know there’s a ton of wish fulfillment in this particular movie. So much of it looks like a ball, like this afternoon. Like, how decadent does this feel?
And we deserve it, damn it. Yes. Yes. I have a six-year-old and a nine-year-old, and you guys are obviously the cool bloggers and the chill bloggers. And I found it really, really helpful especially because my parents don’t live in LA.
It’s not the same culture where your mom comes over to help you babysit. At least, I wasn’t lucky enough for that. So, you depend on your pals or other amazing women that are going through it or have gone through it — thank God. You can’t do it by yourself. It takes a village. I think this movie is such an awesome message of the solidarity. We’re all in it together. We can’t just lessen those expectations.
Question: We want to know if you guys have had any bad mom moments yourself with your kids, just any oops?
Kathryn Hahn: Okay, my son was maybe a half a year old, not even. I keep making him younger as it goes to kind of make me feel better, crying so hard, did not know–.
Blogger: –It was last year.
Kathryn Hahn: It was last year. What’s the matter? What’s the matter? I was checking his fingers and toes. I didn’t know what he had — it was like he wouldn’t eat. It was like a mess. Finally changed his diaper, and one of my hairs had wrapped itself around his nuts like five times.
Blogger: Aw.
Kathryn Hahn: Almost castrated my child. That was a good moment, she says, downing her mimosa.
Mila Kunis: It’s a good story, right? I know. I know. It makes me laugh every time.
Kathryn Hahn: He’ll be thrilled I told it.
Mila Kunis: My story, I don’t know if you guys have interviewed Annie [Mumolo] yet, but my story is similar to Annie. So, I’ve only been a mom for 21 months, but it’s pretty good. So, Wyatt was like at seven, eight months old, and I was driving to visit my husband at work. And driving with an eight month old for a couple hours is like going on a road trip.
So, you have to pack all this stuff up in anticipation of everything going horribly wrong with the first baby. Second baby doesn’t matter. First baby, you’re like, oh, my God, everything’s going to go wrong. So, you pack the car up with all this stuff.
I was like I did it. I put her in the car. Like, I high five myself. I’m driving down the 101. I was like oh my God, I’m doing really good today. She was being really quiet, and I was like, oh, let me look in the rearview mirror to make sure everything’s okay. And I look, and she’s happy as can be, but just not nearly strapped in.
I was like, oh, fuck me. And I’m on the 101, and she’s just like blah, like fine in her car seat, nothing, no strap whatsoever. And I think I just turned white. It was like what do I do? So, I pulled over. I calmly crawled in the backseat, strapped her in, continued to drive, I’m never talking about this story to anybody ever. It’s just going to be me, myself, and I … lesson learned. I’m so grateful.
I literally pull up to my husband’s work and just burst out crying. I was like I fucked up. I fucked up. And lo and behold, a year later, like two, three weeks ago, a month ago, I came to get Wyatt out of the backseat of the car, my husband put her in, I went in to get her out and I opened the car door, and she’s not strapped in whatsoever. And I was like thank God. I was so excited. I wasn’t alone.
And everybody’s fine. Everybody lived. It’s only a little bit illegal. But, you know, I made a little bit of a mess up.
Question: What’s something that you learned after becoming a mom that you never would have thought would have been a thing?
Kathryn Hahn: I think what I didn’t expect was that feeling of that impossible, like inevitable heartbreak of knowing how short it is. I didn’t realize. I heard everyone say it’s so fast. It’s so fast. My mom would say like the days are long, the years are short and all this crap. I didn’t really know what that meant until I experienced it, and now my oldest is nine.
We spoon still, and I’m like [crying sound] because I just know I don’t have that much more of it. All the other noise just becomes such nonsense. Do you know what I mean?
Blogger: Yes.
Kathryn Hahn: At the end of the day, it’s like, oh, who cares? We as mamas, it’s such a short amount of time, their childhood. So, you know, it’s just like I guess enjoy it.
Mila Kunis: Yes, I think I’ve said this before. But, I think the truest form of unconditional love. Like, I love my husband. I thought that that was to me the most purest sense of love. I love this human being. I love my parents. This is love.
Maybe it was the hormones, but I remember after giving birth to Wyatt that I looked at her, and I was like, oh my God, I would murder someone for you. I couldn’t get over truly how much I love this little, tiny, little human that I’ve had only for a couple hours to the point when we were leaving the hospital and I looked at the nurse, and I was like I’m really allowed to take the baby home? And they’re like, well, we don’t want it.
I was like, oh, okay. How could you not want this wonderful being? Mind you, we all have them, but I think mine’s the best. But, like, the truest, truest, truest, most honest, like, guttural reaction of love I think I never knew until I had a child.
Question: Has there ever been a moment where you just want to, like in the movie, you virtually went on strike as a mom.
Mila Kunis: I can say really quickly I’ve only been a mom for 21 months. She’s still really lovely. I still have a child who’s really nice and doesn’t kick and scream. I’m very lucky. So, not yet, but, boy, will it happen.
Kathryn Hahn: I have a son and a daughter. My six-year-old has, as my mom would say, met my match. It’s so true. She is such a spicy meatball. She just gives it right back to me. That’s the difference between the girls and the boys too, is the like emotional minefield that is trying to navigate a girl. It’s like you’re a step ahead of me. What are we fighting about?
I wonder what’s going to happen when she’s in high school? So, yes, there have been moments where I am like I need to go. I need to get out of here. Absolutely, I don’t trust what’s going to come out of my mouth. Do you know what I mean? Like, if I’m going to say something that we all regret, so, yes, oh my God, absolutely.
Time outs don’t work with her, though, because she’s just going to come right back, or she’s like, fine, I wanted to be by myself, or whatever. And she’ll make it her decision. I’m like, oh my God!
Mila Kunis: She doesn’t find me funny. She hates my humor.
Kathryn Hahn: Yes, she’s a real tough cookie. I try to make a joke, and she’s like terrible. It’s like, God. Ugh, Mom, terrible. And then she’ll look at me and be like are you really wearing that? I’m like, May, brush your hair, and she’s like you brush your hair. Like, okay, anyway.
Question: Mom guilt, do you guys subscribe to it or park it?
Mila Kunis: A hundred percent subscribe to it, not intentionally. It’s like that like subscription that you want to go away, but it’s just constantly there. Like, at this very moment being here, I’m like why am I here? I can be with my daughter. It’s every day, all day long.
Kathryn Hahn: Yes. I don’t know. Now that they’re a little bit older, I don’t know. I’m lucky. I feel so blessed that I have a job that I really, really dig, and that when I’m not with them, it’s somewhere where I’m like excited and inspired, and hopefully they’ll be able to see their mommy doing something she loves –but, yes, of course. Of course. It sucks.
Mila Kunis: It sucks to not be putting your child down every night. It’s something that I think our hours are just so erratic that like 17-hour days when I was 20 was like a piece of cake. Seventeen-hour work days now where I’m not there when she wakes up in the morning, and I’m not there to put her down at night, and I see her for my 20 minute lunch break is very empty.
So, yes, it’s constant.
Kathryn Hahn: Yes, you just feel like you’re missing a limb. You know what I mean? But, yes, everybody has to do it. It is what it is. I also feel like when I had an awesome therapist once what if we just get really into guys? But, I just remember somebody saying, well, you know what? If it’s what it is and okay for you, then that’s all they know.
So, it’s like my kids grew up in a circus family. So, that’s just what it is. If we put any weirdness or oh-ness on it, then they’re going to be like, it is what it is.
Mila Kunis: It’s the norm.
* SPOILER ALERT *
Question: The ending of the movie was just awesome. I loved how you wrapped it up when the moms came out and y’all spoke about your relationships. Was that planned?
Kathryn Hahn: How sweet was that?
Mila Kunis: They literally had our moms and us sit down, and I think you and I were both so nervous that my mom was going to say something horrible. I was like, Mommy, be nice. You’re on camera. Be nice. And she was like, okay, okay.
None of it’s planned. It was literally us sitting in a room, independently thinking. And Jon [Lucas, Writer/Director] and Scott [Moore, Writer/Director] would ask my mom questions. The whole time I was like you better be nice. You just better be nice because you’re just so nervous. Of course, like 30 minutes in, we’re both bawling and crying. You can’t help it.
We’ve never talked about that stuff. I love my mom. She’s one of my dearest friends. But, she’s never been like you’re an amazing mother. I’m so proud of you. To me, intentionally, like she’s shown it. But, to have her sit there and say that I lost it.
Kathryn Hahn: Oh, yes. We knew in reading the script that that was always in the script. They had wanted their dream of that to be the credits.
Mila Kunis: All it said was like credits with real moms.
Kathryn Hahn: Yes. And then each of those interviews are also like an hour long. They shot each of us with our mamas for like a very long time, which I’m like you’ve got to release all that.
Mila Kunis: Everybody cried. Everybody across the board. I mean you’re laughing. You’re crying.
Kathryn Hahn: –How sweet is it that last night we were like all of the mothers–and then we were like–and Annie was like not my mom. But, all of the mamas basically were like I wish I had been like you. I mean like that they knew how proud–oh, it was just stupid cute. Oh my God, it made me cry.
Question: If you were to go back — as you are now — go back to before you were parents, what kind of advice would you give yourself?
Mila Kunis: Apologize to my mom sooner would be my advice. I’m not kidding. I apologize to my mom. When I was like 22, I was like I’m so sorry. I was such a bitch. And she went, yes. And I was like okay. I wish I can go back to my 16-year-old self and say, they’re not against me. I think the biggest thing is that you grow up thinking that the world’s–I mean it’s all hormones, and its angst. And you’re supposed to go through it.
But, I just wish I realized and understood just how much my mom and my dad, not to alienate my dad, but just how much my parents loved me, unconditionally loved me. If I called them and said I just murdered someone, they’d go, well, let’s figure it out. I know that in my heart, and I don’t think I quite understood that until I had my own child.
Kathryn Hahn: I would say absolutely just don’t waste your precious brain space worrying about that nonsense. So much nonsense was I worrying about that I wish that I hadn’t been, and it goes so fast. Like, who cares what people think? You know your kid better than anybody. You find your tribe that are the same that you’re likeminded mamas. And it’s all noise, the rest of it.
But, it’s hard. I had never felt more young than after having my first kid because you really are like I don’t know. It sounds like it’s so terrifying. But, then there is something underneath it if you just listen it that you know exactly what you’re supposed to do.
Photo Credit: STX Entertainment
And then, just like that, the interview was over.
Mila and Kathryn were very sweet and agreed to take the time group photos. We were all able to go up, pass around a few hellos and giggles, and then have our picture snapped.
They were whisked away to their next interview or hopefully a break to spend time with their littles and we were left to jabber about what had just happened, what we had learned, and perhaps partake in another mimosa.
What this interview reaffirmed for me is that celebrities really are just like us. I was given the opportunity to sit down with A-Listers and pick their brain and what I learned is that we talk the same, we have the same experiences, and we are all moms that are just trying to get through the day to day while doing the best that we can for our families.
I gave myself a mental high five and waited for the next interview …. !
STAY TUNED!
BAD MOMS HITS THEATERS JULY 29TH
… There’s something in each one of these six women that I think that we can either recognize, or it’s like you could dream about being … – Kathryn Hahn
See the BAD MOMS Trailer: https://youtu.be/MVzDKTh49zs
TICKET INFORMATION: Bad Moms celebrates “Bad Mother’s Day” on July 29 – the Mother’s Day you really want and deserve! Get tickets now: http://www.badmomstickets.com/
BAD MOMS – In Theaters July 29
In this new comedy from the grateful husbands and devoted fathers who wrote The Hangover, Amy has a seemingly perfect life – a great marriage, over-achieving kids, beautiful home and a career. However she’s over-worked, over-committed and exhausted to the point that she’s about to snap.
Fed up, she joins forces with two other over-stressed moms on a quest to liberate themselves from conventional responsibilities – going on a wild, un-mom-like binge of long overdue freedom, fun and self-indulgence – putting them on a collision course with PTA Queen Bee Gwendolyn and her clique of devoted perfect moms.
Cast: Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn, Jay Hernandez, Clark Duke, Annie Mumolo, with Jada Pinkett Smith and Christina Applegate
Studio: STX Entertainment
Genre: Comedy
Writers/Directors: Jon Lucas & Scott Moore
Producers: Suzanne Todd, Bill Block
CONNECT WITH BAD MOMS
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Disclosure: I was sent to LA to attend the Bad Moms Junket Event all expenses paid in order to cover their event (Thank you STX Entertainment). All opinions are 100% my own.
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