Mila Kunis on reconnecting with Ashton Kutcher as friends with benefits: ‘We lived out our movies!’

Despite their best intentions, life imitated art for Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher.

The married couple first met as on-screen love interests on That ’70s Show but didn’t date until years later, when they unexpectedly hooked up at his housewarming party and decided to try to keep things casual.

During her interview Tuesday on The Howard Stern Show, Kunis admitted that they should have consulted the scripts for their separate-but-similar 2011 films about how those types of arrangements don’t tend to last.

“I did Friends with Benefits, he did a movie called No Strings Attached. If we just paid attention to these movies, we should know that s*** like this does not work out in real life,” she said, laughing. “Well, we clearly didn’t pay attention, and we shook hands and were like ‘Let’s just have fun.’ I mean, literally we lived out our movies, Howard.”

Although they stayed in touch through AIM after wrapping That ’70s Show in 2006, Kunis, 32, said she never even thought about romancing Kutcher, 38, until they ran into each other at an award show.

“I see this guy, and I see his back, and he’s really tall, and I’m like, ‘Who’s that tall guy?'” she recalled. “And I’m wearing this big poofy dress, and I look ridiculous … and then he just turns around and it was like, literally, if we were in a movie, the music would start playing and violins would go.”

“I think that he, for the first time ever, just took my breath away,” she added.

The actor invited her to his bash, intending to set her up with someone else, but sparks flew once she walked through the door, wondering why she felt “butterflies” about someone she’d known since she was a teenager.

“Long story short, I didn’t leave ’til the next morning,” she said. “Then we ended up having a lot of talks about how this is a huge mistake and how he needs to go and be single, and I need to go and be single.”

Kunis had just split from Macauley Culkin, her boyfriend of eight years, and Kutcher was fresh off filing for divorce from Demi Moore.

“I think it took him and I both by surprise, because we started dating with the idea that we both were never going to get married,” she said. “He just got out of a marriage, I got out of a long relationship, I was single and having the best time ever.”

Flash forward to now, and the stars are parents to 2-year-old daughter Wyatt and expecting a second baby — a picture-perfect Hollywood happy ending.

“I think we both had to go through a lot in our lives to become the people that we were, because we would never be together based on the people that we used to be, ever,” Kunis said.

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