‘That ’70s Show’ star Mila Kunis had a self-proclaimed encounter with fellow Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky, long before he was elected president of the beleaguered European nation in 2019.
Kunis – who on Wednesday was named among People Magazine Person of the Year for fundraising efforts to benefit his war-torn homeland – shared details of their first meeting, which took place nearly a decade ago when a comedian-turned-politician remake TV series “Servant of the people” was doing the rounds in Hollywood.
“I had a deal with ABC, and I was desperately trying to get the show to the network. We eventually outbid, but in the process, I talked to this actor named Zelensky,” Kunis told the magazine. .
“Years later, I was reading the news and saw that Ukraine had a new president. I thought, ‘A Jewish president? Mazel Tov! This name sounds so familiar to me. I looked through my emails and thought, “I know him!” “, she said, adding, “Our own little meet-cute.
The two met again over the years, especially in 2019 when she and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, took a meeting with the chef when he visited the United States to participate the United Nations General Assembly in New York. At the time, the first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, an architect and screenwriter, published an article about their shared meal on instagramdescribing their conversation about cinema as “fruitful” and including the hope of developing and attracting investors to the Ukrainian film industry.
Such plans were likely derailed on February 24 when Russian forces invaded Ukraine in a war that has rages for nine months. A few weeks after the invasion, Kunis, who was born in the former Soviet nation, and Kutcher launched their Stand with Ukraine campaign on GoFundMe
The celebrity couple donated $3 million to the effort and surpassed its goal of $30 million in a month. Actors campaign benefits global logistics experts Flexport.org, which has been tasked with organizing relief shipments to refugee sites in Ukraine’s neighboring countries of Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova. They also used vacation rental company Airbnb, in which Kutcher was one of the first investors, provide free short-term housing to Ukrainian refugees.
In March, when fundraising hit the $35 million mark, Zelensky publicly thanked the couple for their support and said they were “among the first to respond to our grief.”
“Impressed by their determination. They inspire the world. #StandWithUkraine,” he tweeted, sharing a photo of what appeared to be a video call between them.
“We can’t get numb,” the ‘Bad Moms’ star told the magazine. “Helping – not even asking, just doing – should be our standard.”
Kunis, 39, said the fundraiser was one of the first times she spoke about being philanthropic because “there was no other way to do it”.
“When we saw [Russian President Vladimir] Putin was going after the whole country, we knew a massive crisis was going to ensue,” she said.
“The luxury of the situation was that we didn’t have time to think too much,” she said of how quickly her fundraiser went. “Because I’m from Ukraine, I started getting calls from people who [wanted to help and] I thought I knew politics or understood NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] on the ground. This was my realization: if they don’t know where to go, how will they? There were problems that we knew we could help solve. So Ashton and I said, “Okay, let’s do this.” Within 24 hours we had GoFundMe on board.
Kunis was born in 1983 in the then Soviet city of Chernivtsi, which is now in present-day Ukraine. The Russian-speaking star immigrated to the United States in 1991 when she was 7 years old. Her family were granted visas as religious refugees after she and her relatives – some of whom survived the Holocaust – saw others facing anti-Semitism, oppression and lack of opportunity . , she told the magazine.
The ‘Luckiest Girl Alive’ star and producer, who shares two children with her husband and former TV co-star Kutcher, said she made sure their daughter, Wyatt, 8, and son, Dimitri, almost 6 years old, maintains a link with their heritage.
“My children were always going to grow up eating my mother’s food. My parents and I speak Russian, so they grew up with it. They naturally found pride in being half-Ukrainian,” Kunis said, admitting that she herself is “very American,” but says she’s grateful for the “‘You’re different, and that’ approach. is a cool thing’.
She and Kutcher also make sure their children are informed about some of the world’s conflicts.
“[W]We give them enough to understand what’s going on in the world without the details. Do they know that these two countries are at war? Yes. Do they know that innocent people die? Yes. But we don’t watch the news with them. They don’t need the visuals. We just want them to understand that the world is bigger than them.
People magazine also named “Abbott Elementary” star and creator Quinta Brunson and Oscar winners Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Hudson among his personalities of the year 2022.
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