Mila Kunis stars in “Bad Moms,” in which she plays a worn out mom who is tired of the pressures on mothers to be “perfect.” In some sense, Kunis is also sick of those same pressures put on female-led films.
In a recent interview on ABC News’ “Popcorn With Peter Travers,” Kunis said, “The hardest part about all of this is when a movie that is starring women does well, everyone goes, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’ … But when it goes bad, then everyone goes, ‘We knew it. We knew this was going to happen,’” she explained. “A male-driven film, it doesn’t matter, whether it’s good or bad, no one comments on it. It’s just either good or bad. With a female-driven film, it’s females. ‘Well this female succeeded, or this female failed.’ It’s going to have to change one day.”
Not only does Hollywood judge female-led films differently, but the pressures of perfection leach into actresses’ lives, and the lives of women in general.
She continued, “I think that we as women, not even moms, but as women, put too much pressure on ourselves to be what is considered perfect in society, you know, socially speaking. All the time I feel stressed, but it’s all self-induced.”
As ABC pointed out, Kunis is taking things into her own hands by starting her own production company with ABC called Orchard Farm Productions, with which, “she’s tried to change the industry by bringing more female talents together and female-driven concepts to television. Though she believes the television industry has become more open-minded, she says writers’ rooms are still incredibly limited in female talent.”
“Bad Moms” hits theaters today, July 29.