As I waited for Mila Kunis to take the stage at the “Apple Eve” event she was hosting, I knew that no amount of Jim Beam Apple was going to turn this night around. The invite had promised a “refreshingly unexpected evening” celebrating the launch of Jim Beam’s newest flavored bourbon. But the only part that seemed unexpected was that we seemed to have time traveled back to 2008, when Kunis was still with Macaulay Culkin, Ashton Kutcher was still with Demi Moore, and Santigold was still Santogold.
Earlier that afternoon, I arrived at the Paramount Hotel in Times Square for an interview with Kunis. The hotel lobby had the air of a club that made the inadvisable choice to open at 11 a.m. on a weekday. The vaguely alcoholic scent of what I secretly hoped/worried was Jim Beam Apple permeated the room. A combination of tourists and journalists slouched on the lounge chairs and leather sectional couches, encased in the dark, wood-paneled walls. On the second floor, a makeshift DJ booth overlooked the lobby, which was later manned by a burly guy wearing a soccer jersey who continued spinning the eurotrash techno and late 2000s emo music that drifted through the speakers.
Mila Kunis first got her start as Jackie on That 70s Show and later as the voice of Meg on Family Guy. After she made it big on the small screen, Kunis moved into film, costarring in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Black Swan among other films. She was tucked away in a second floor room that resembled a Delta Sky Club, guarded by an intimidating security man. Dressed in a black blazer and crisp black pants, her hair perfectly straightened, the only part of her outfit that separated her from a New York businesswoman were her translucent, black lace heels.
Though her body showed no trace of the baby she’d had just over a year ago, her current career choices make it clear that she is now a mother. At 32, Kunis has decided to move behind the camera and take up producing with her company, Orchard Farms Productions. “I love producing. It's something that I take a lot of pride in,” she said, “I can do it from one location, I work with a brilliant group of women that I respect and admire. It's something that lets me be creative while also maintaining a relationship with my daughter.”
Kunis has taken it easy since the birth of her daughter, but she has continued to be the voice for Meg on Family Guy. Kunis said that the flexibility of voice acting has made it easy to stick with it, “I've traveled the world and I've done Family Guy from everywhere I've been, including Africa.”
Flexibility and family values were ever-present themes for Kunis, conveniently tying in with Jim Beam’s family-focused branding. Kunis became a spokesperson for Jim Beam in 2014, but had an interest in bourbon long before that. “I've always wanted to be a part of a Bourbon company,” Kunis said, “I've always wanted to do my own bourbon. I love the idea of drinking bourbon. I'm sure it was a thing of 'everyone drinks vodka, so I'm going to drink bourbon.' I'm sure that's how it started in my mind.” As she sat with Fred Noe, the master distiller and some level of great-grandson of the original Jim Beam founder, she focused on the lifestyle aspects of drinking bourbon, rather than the partying aspect that most of us drink Jim Beam for. In her younger days when she worked on and off as a bartender, Kunis said “between the hours of 8 p.m. and 4 a.m., I could do shots pretty well and take myself home and be fine in the morning.” But ten years later, she doesn’t have the same drive to prove her partying prowess.
At the beginning of “Apple Eve,” photographers seemed to outnumber guests, none of whom so far seemed to warrant the camera flashes of the pseudo-paparazzi. The venue was the basement club of the Paramount and had been decorated by some kind of steampunk interior designer who really loved apples. The vaulted ceiling looked like it had once held a grand chandelier. Now, only neon green track lighting remained. Long velvet drapes surrounded the stage and more velvet covered the handrails of every set of stairs. Every single thing was covered in apples, vines, or a combination of the two. Two women on stilts teetered around, their vine-and-flower-covered outfits making them look like sexy Ents. Waiters swarmed with hors d’ourves that reminded me of the kind of food a high school student would think was high class: deviled eggs, bacon-wrapped figs, a potato chip topped with a beef cube and cucumber slice.
The first drink I was offered was the simple Jim Beam Apple and Soda, the featured drink of the night. Jim Beam Apple tastes like someone poured a bag of green apple Jolly Ranchers into a bottle of bourbon and left it there for a year. The other drinks had increasing amounts of various sugary mixers, but the candy flavor overpowered them all. Instead of getting a buzz, I got a stomach ache.
I had been given a special key that was supposed to give me access to “hidden rooms” throughout the venue. In the three hours I spent there, I was taken to exactly one secret room. A woman in a lot of eyeliner and an extremely long dinner jacket mysteriously showed up and whisked me away to the not-so-secret door in a hallway directly off the main room. She asked me to think of a secret I had never told anyone, which would be traded for a special drink.
She opened the door to reveal a hallway filled with old-timey furniture that led to a tiny alcove with walls covered in white wax (or, as my other eyeliner-covered guide told me, “Mostly wax. We can’t tell you what else it’s covered in”). A woman was perched on the edge of a bathtub filled with water and apples, surrounded by candles and mixed drinks. In exchange for my (made-up) secret, I was given a drink and alerted to the fact that I was a loud whisperer in this weird faux-Sleep No More environment.
An hour after we arrived, our hosts appeared. As Kunis and Noe took the stage, it was up to the Master Distiller to act as emcee. As he concluded his generic toast, Mila offered the few words she would speak that evening, “Have fun, get shitfaced. Woo!” And with that, Kunis disappeared for the evening, most likely enjoying a beverage in the privacy of her hotel room.
Throughout the night, bells would randomly start chiming and another man in a glitter-covered suit would read special Jim Beam-themed messages before introducing a Cirque du Soleil-esque aerial performance. As performers hung from scarves and spun on hoops suspended from the ceiling, the dream of the mid-2000s was alive.
But as Santigold (formerly Santogold) took the stage and played almost every song on her hit 2008 album, Santogold, it was clear that none of us were ready to be our former selves. Santigold had an embarrassed smile on her face, clearly knowing that half the audience wondered where she’d been for the last seven years, and perhaps aware of the fact that not many people—myself included—know she dropped an album in 2012.
Kunis too, was clearly not ready to party like it was 2008, preferring to make her obligated appearance and then ghosting. Maybe her presence could have knocked out my self-awareness and dragged me back to the days of YOLO. But without her, I had zero desire to drink flavored alcohol at the rate that I could have (and regrettably did) back then. And I was thankful to return to 2015 at the end of the night.
