(Photo Courtesy of Castle Rock Entertainment)
Press junkets tend to be boring but this most recent one for “Friends with Benefits” in Moscow was more amusing than most, and featured no small amount of sass from the Jewish actress of the moment, Mila Kunis.
Kunis, who lived in the Ukraine until the age of 7, is fluent in Russian and more than nimbly handled the reporters, fielding a pointless question aimed at costar Justin Timberlake before the translator could interpret it for him.
The journalist had asked Timberlake, “Why are you doing this film?”
Before he could answer Kunis jumped in. “Why shouldn’t he? What else should he be doing?” she asked. And then she turned the tables on the journalist and rhetorically asked, “Why are you here?” to peals of laughter.
Timberlake, it must be said, handled the situation adorably as the Russian and laughter swirled around him. After the translation came through his earpiece, he pointed at his pint sized costar and said, “She’s my bodyguard.”
Still it would have been fun (and hot) to see Timberlake converse a bit in Russian, but he sings, dances and acts. I guess it’s too much to expect fluency in a foreign language on top of all that.
