Mila Kunis: Black Beauty

Even if you haven’t seen Black Swan, you’ve probably heard about a certain sex scene between Golden Globe nominees Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman as rival ballerinas. Kunis isn’t crazy about that prurient attention, but the 27-year-old That ’70s Show star doesn’t dance around details of her naked romp with Justin Timberlake in this summer’s Friends With Benefits. She also claims that Family Guy, for which she voices teen misfit Meg Griffin, might be the gay-friendliest show on television.

The Advocate: Did you know how much gay audiences were going to swoon over Black Swan?
Mila Kunis: Well, we didn’t have Cher in our movie, but we figured gay people would still be into it. [Laughs] I grew up in West Hollywood, in the heart of the gay community, so I’ve always been attuned with the gays. My first gay friend came out in junior high, but I always gravitated toward gay people.

How do you explain that connection?
I was raised in a household where there wasn’t a separation between straight people and gay people, so I never saw being gay as something out of the ordinary. When I first started going out, I’d go to the Abbey, Micky’s, or Akbar, because all my friends were gay. I’m a massive “fairy princess,” as I like to call it. But even at the age of 10, I never thought it was weird to see two guys holding hands and making out. It wasn’t until I was about 19 when I realized that the whole world didn’t share the same views as I did.

Tell me about your best gay friend.
I’ve known David for many years, and he’s awesome. He comes from a half-Hispanic, half-white family; half didn’t accept him when he came out of the closet, and the other half completely embraced it. But looking at David, I still don’t understand how anyone in his family didn’t know he was gay. [Laughs] We like to see movies together, and we travel a bit. He likes hipster music — he wears skinny jeans and Converse shoes — so sometimes I’ll go sit and suffer while he listens to random bands that I’ve never heard of. He’s also the only person I trust to watch my dogs when I’m out of town. David has a boyfriend, and they want to get married. He and I go to a lot of the gay functions, the AIDS walks, and we protested together when Prop. 8 first passed. I’m still baffled that it passed, and I swear it’s because so many people were confused about the wording of the proposition. I’m not some big public activist, but I privately support all of my gay friends who are affected by that verdict.

Long before the film came out, the media was already focusing on Black Swan’s same-sex love scene. Did that annoy you?
No, but it is surprising how many times that’s all people wanted to talk about. I just wish everyone could walk out of an hour-and-a-half movie with something to talk about other than that one scene.