Mila Kunis reveals that she aged into her role in the comedy film Ted. Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane made his live-action directorial debut with Ted in 2012, and the movie was a box office success that's remembered as a classic of its era. The comedy featured Mark Wahlberg in his hometown of Boston as John Bennet, a slacker with a living teddy bear named Ted (MacFarlane) as a best friend and bad influence. Kunis starred opposite Wahlberg as his put-upon girlfriend Lori, though she did not return for the 2015 sequel Ted 2.
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Kunis has been a longtime collaborator with MacFarlane on Family Guy, having played Meg Griffin since 1999. Because much of the Ted cast was fleshed out by Family Guy regulars, including Patrick Warburton and Alex Borstein, one might think that Kunis was just another in-house selection, or was considered from the very start. However, this would be an oversimplification of how Kunis became Ted's Lori, who pulls through as one of the story's heroes and main characters.
While appearing on the podcast Sad Happy Confused, Kunis explains that she was not the first actor considered for the role of Ted's Lori. MacFarlane had been consulting with Kunis while looking for the female lead but had not initially asked her to play it. Casting had been arduous, and by the time she was offered the part in late 2010, she says enough time had passed that she aged into the role. Read her full comment below:
"He was casting it for a while before Wahlberg signed on, but even once Wahlberg signed on, he was casting other women. And he kept coming to me during recordings and being like 'who else?'. Because it took a while for a talking bear movie to get made. And I kept throwing out names like 'what about that person? She's a great actress'. And then all of the sudden I started getting older and older and older. And in Hollywood, I now can play opposite Mark Wahlberg, magically…But at that point I had already went through, like, a year of casting with him."
Why Kunis Was Able To Play Wahlberg's Love Interest
Kunis was 27 years old when she was cast in Ted and played opposite a then 39-year-old Mark Wahlberg. As Kunis says, she had only aged about one year from the time she was pushing for other actors to play Lori to actually getting the part. One year passing is a short amount of time for non-actors, but Kunis notes that Hollywood's perception of an actor's age is warped. Kunis, now 39, doesn't seem to hold any malice towards being called up to play Lori, regardless of what it implied about her age or state of her career at the time. She speaks fondly about the Ted experience, and fans of the film adore Kunis' performance.
The female love interests of male actors, as in the case of Ted, are commonly a decade younger than their counterparts, which is hardly a reflection of reality. Female actors have come forward about facing decreased opportunity as they age despite accumulating more experience, and this casting tendency is a factor in that transgression. Ted is a raunchy comedy film made by actors who are known to be friends outside of work and therefore may not be the best vessel for exploring the dynamics of age in relationships or in Hollywood. Still, it is an example of a casting trope that can also give a malleable audience a misconstrued perspective of what the real world holds when established as the structural norm in movie-making for decades.