There are some lines you just never cross.
In the new movie “Friends with Benefits,” Mila Kunis (“Black Swan”) and Justin Timberlake (“The Social Network”) try to negotiate the complicated avenues when two friends become involved. Kunis plays Jamie, a headhunter in a leading job agency that befriends one of her assets, Timberlake’s character, Dylan—a hotshot young art director for an LA-based Internet company being recruited by GQ magazine in New York. Soon enough, they develop a friendship that led to them being physically intimate. However, both agree they are only doing so with the clear mind that they won’t get attached to—and develop romantic feelings for—each other.
Billed as a rom-com, the story nevertheless raises a very real question—whether men and women can really be friends.
Kunis points out, “I have many male friends that I have no desire of becoming intimate with, and I am sure they feel the same way. I strongly believe that the opposite sex can be your friend without anything happening.”
But no matter what people say about this theory, human emotions do get in the way, in ways people don’t expect or think they can avoid. Sex and friendship really is a complicated game to play.
Kunis considers this and notes, “I agree with Justin when he says that it is probably a really good idea until it becomes a really bad one. And as a woman, I think it could leave you in a very delicate and dangerous position.”
Especially women who are trying not to get hurt again, like Jamie, whom Kunis describes as, “a 20-something-year-old who is trying to figure out her life and who she is. Her heart has been broken multiple times, so she probably has some trust issues. I think Jamie is just figuring herself out, like most women her age today.”
There are a good number of women that can relate to what Jamie is going through, and Kunis plays her as a strong but sensitive woman, broken but still open to life’s possibilities—perhaps even more so than the man that has entered her life. And for a character that hits quite close to home, her relationship with Timberlake behind the scenes has become the key to their onscreen chemistry.
But it wasn’t like they had a real history before this movie, although that was hardly evident in the end product. “I had met him before, although I hardly knew him,” Kunis relates. “But, as we were given the opportunity to work for three months on the script, we soon became friends and got to know each other before the shoot.”
Kunis says it does help to be friends with co-actors, “but that isn’t very common,” she reveals. And while they managed to remain friends after the production, she also notes, “That also doesn’t normally happen.”
But while working on the film, Kunis reiterates the need to “feel comfortable with your partner in crime,” especially in some scenes that require them to be uninhibited. “You want to know there is a safety net underneath you in case you make a mistake—which you will—and that there is someone there to pick you up. And, in that sense, I couldn’t have felt more comfortable than with Justin because we were in the same boat together.”
A self-confessed fan of rom-coms, her favorite being “Pretty Woman,” Kunis reveals going through a different process for this movie—one that involved her being more than just the actor in front of the camera.
“The whole script ended up being worked on for a period of two or three months prior to production. Justin, [writer-director] Will Gluck and I would get together and work on the dialogue and the characters scene by scene until we made them what we wanted them to be and have their reactions being what we saw them being,” she shares.
“I have never done a movie before in which I was involved in the whole process, even when I was attached early to it; but this time I was there when we rewrote everything for months and months. It has been really different from what I have experienced before and really rewarding and refreshing. That's why I said yes.”
And she adds, “Then, of course, I wanted to work with Justin...”
Whoever coined the phrase from which the premise of this movie is based must not have considered the plethora of complications it brings. See for yourself as “Friends with Benefits” opens nationwide on Sept. 28.
Emily Osment discusses growing up with her older brother, actor Haley Joel Osment. Plus, Emily looks back fondly over her years working on “Hannah Montana,” but does she still keep in touch with Miley Cyrus and the rest of the cast?
The Voice judge Christina Aguilera loves classic video games. It is incredibly interesting to picture her enjoying this type of entertainment. The Genie in a Bottle singer revealed her passion to Jimmy Kimmel last week.
which is hosted by Carson Daly and features the pop superstar along with musicians Cee-Lo Green, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton. The show hopes to discover - you guessed it - yet another future pop star.
