After their marriage was plagued with split rumors, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher lashed out against their detractors.

It’s fair to say that Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher have been one of Hollywood’s most well-liked couples in recent years. Their love story is the stuff of fairytales, given that they knew each other for decades before eventually hooking up. And while both of them have been in the limelight since their teenage years, they’re fiercely private when it comes to their family. But after rumors of divorce continued to plague their marriage, the stars issued a shocking and very public response to the speculation.

With that desire for discretion in mind, Kunis and Kutcher married in secret back in 2014. Furthermore, the couple have also fought to defend the privacy of their two kids Wyatt and Dimitri. But after being dogged with split rumors in June 2019 the pair posted a pretty scathing video on Instagram. And their discussions in the clip have left the internet stunned.

Yet Kunis and Kutcher go way back. They initially met on the set of the 1990s sitcom That 70’s Show. The series first aired in 1998, with Kunis and Kutcher playing high-schoolers Jackie Burkhart and Michael Kelso, respectively. At the time, Kunis was just 14 and Kutcher was 19. Given her youth, the pair were lucky to actually have met in the first place.

That’s because Kunis had had to be economical with the truth when it came to her age. The casting director on That 70’s Show had only wanted to employ actors who were 18 and over, you see. So, Kunis simply said that she would soon be 18. And by the time the show’s bosses discovered her true age, they’d already fallen for her talent.

As a result of that tall tale, Kunis was chosen to play Burkhart. What’s more, she seemingly embraced everything that the role threw at her. And this included having her very first smooch on the TV show, with none other than – you guessed it – Kutcher. However, he apparently didn’t realize that he was going to be the first person that Kunis would kiss.

In 2001 Kunis recalled her reaction to learning that she would have to smooch Kutcher as part of the show. Speaking to Insider, she said, “I was like, ‘Oh, he’s so cute, it’s the Calvin Klein model!’ Then I was like, ‘I have to kiss him?’ I was so nervous and uncomfortable. I had the biggest crush on him.”

But despite Kunis’ crush on Kutcher, the five-year age gap between the actors seemed too wide to bridge back then. In 2012 their That 70’s Show castmate Kurtwood Smith explained to E! News, “They played boyfriend and girlfriend, but they had completely separate lives… Mila was a kid. That was awkward for Ashton at the beginning. He was like 19, and she was like 14 or 15.”

In fact, Kutcher would later admit that he and Kunis had more of a brother-sister relationship when they were castmates. So when Kutcher left That 70’s Show in 2005, he and Kunis basically went their separate ways. They kept in contact and would sometimes cross paths at showbiz events. But there was apparently nothing romantic between the pair.

After all, both Kunis and Kutcher were in long-term relationships with other people during that time. Kutcher married actress Demi Moore in 2005, while Kunis had been in a relationship with former child star Macaulay Culkin since 2002. However, in 2011 both Kunis and Kutcher found themselves single once again.

Kunis and Kutcher reunited in 2012, when they both handed out prizes at the Golden Globes. It was there that Kunis found herself checking her former co-star out, as she explained to the WTF with Marc Maron podcast in 2018. “I thought it was the weirdest thing that I was checking this guy out, and it was someone that I had known forever,” she recalled.

Nevertheless, Kunis must have been stoked when Kutcher invited her to his upcoming housewarming party in the Hollywood Hills. Kutcher, however, had actually been planning to set his former co-star up with one of his buddies. But ultimately, events took a different turn and Kunis and Kutcher finally got together.

Image: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

It was at the housewarming party that Kunis and Kutcher shared their first offscreen smooch, as Kutcher recalled to Elle in 2017. “I think I was smoking cigarettes at the time, and I was still a smoker,” he said. “And she had quit smoking and she was like, she wanted me to like shotgun a cigarette smoke so she could breathe it in, and I was like, ‘All right.’”

Kutcher continued, “I started doing this. And gradually through the night, it got closer and closer and closer… It was kind of obvious that things were happening.” However, the pair believed that their first kiss had been misguided at first. Kunis told Elle, “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.”

But it seems that Kunis and Kutcher simply couldn’t stay away from each other. And in early 2012 they started getting together. As Kunis later told Maron, “I did a movie called Friends With Benefits. He did a movie that was very similar called No Strings Attached. We lived our movies out. We were just like, let’s just hook up. Let’s have fun.”

Kunis and Kutcher, however, were clearly developing quite serious feelings for each other. Indeed, by April 2012 – after a few months of hooking up – the pair had even started living with each other. Kutcher subsequently filed for divorce from Moore in December 2012. And by November 2013 their split was finalized.

Now that Kutcher was officially a single man, he and Kunis wasted no time in getting engaged. And the news was confirmed in February 2014 when Kunis was seen sporting a telling rock on her ring finger. However, that wasn’t the only life-changing news that 2014 brought for the celebrity couple.

In May 2014 Kunis revealed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that she and Kutcher were expecting their first child. She went on to remark that her pregnancy had left her craving sauerkraut and pickles. Furthermore, she confirmed that Kutcher was therefore keeping their home stocked up with all the weird foodstuffs that she might fancy.

Happily, Kunis and Kutcher welcomed their first child – a girl named Wyatt Isabelle Kutcher – in October 2014. And during another appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2015, Kunis opened up about Kutcher’s parenting skills. She called him “a master swaddler.” Kunis revealed, “He can swaddle anyone’s baby. Like if your baby needs to be swaddled, he will do it… Call him. He is a pro!”

Kunis and Kutcher tied the knot in Oak Glen, California, in July 2015. Just over a year later, in November 2015, they welcomed their second baby, a son named Dimitri Portwood Kutcher. And in March 2017 Kunis confirmed that she and Kutcher felt like they were complete as a family of four.

And Kunis told Entertainment Tonight, “We’re good on two right now.” Explaining her stance, she added, “[With two kids] you’re running defense a little bit. Like, one’s got one and the other’s got one and it’s okay. I think it’s when it becomes three is when you’re like, you’re just playing offense… You’re scrambling trying to keep them all in line.”

But aside from comments made during the occasional interview, Kunis and Kutcher prefer to keep their family life out of the public eye. And the duo are especially guarded in relation to their children’s privacy. As a result, in 2015 they successfully sued website MailOnline after it published photographs of their daughter.

And two years after the court case, in 2017, Kutcher took to Twitter to remind people and publications to respect his kids’ privacy. “I continue to kindly ask, please don’t post/publish photos of our kids,” he said. “They haven’t chosen a life in the public eye. Yes, we took them to a public place (we like sharing life with our kids). No, that doesn’t mean we are [okay] with their photos being published.”

Image: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney

Given her dislike of media intrusion, Kunis has previously admitted that she never actively reads stories written about her. However, she has said she often sees rumors about Kutcher and herself on magazines when she visits the grocery store. But for the most part, she seems generally capable of ignoring them.

Image: Christopher Polk/Getty Images for Kershaw’s Challenge

In 2018 Kunis told Cosmopolitan, “I genuinely don’t know what’s written about me. Other than I know that I’m pregnant about once a year, and my husband and I are getting a divorce once a year. I know this because I go down the grocery store aisle, and I see it on the cover of magazines, and I’m like, ‘Oh boy, okay!’”

That’s right: Kunis can, apparently, mostly turn a blind eye to the things that are written about her. But she admitted that tabloid rumors do have an effect on her family. She explained to Cosmopolitan, “The only thing that’s upsetting is my parents and my grandparents sometimes get confused.”

And Kunis then recalled one particularly upsetting story that had been written about her and the impact that it had had. She told Cosmopolitan, “At one point when I was pregnant, [the tabloids] said that I had an emergency and was rushed to the hospital, and my face was on the cover. The amount of stress that caused my family, nobody will understand.”

However, in June 2019 Kunis and Kutcher decided that enough was enough regarding the rumors written about their relationship. In a video posted to Kutcher’s Instagram page, the couple specifically took aim at In Touch Weekly. That’s because the magazine had claimed that the couple were calling time on their union.

The edition of In Touch Weekly in question was dated July 1, 2019. And it featured an image of Kunis who appeared to be fiddling with her ring finger. There was also a smaller photograph of Kutcher on the cover, showing the actor looking particularly serious. What’s more, the accompanying headline declared, “It’s Over!”

Image: Steve Jennings/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize

And that’s not all. In Touch Weekly’s sensational splash also stated, “She felt suffocated” – presumably referring to Kunis. Accompanying statements additionally alluded to “the lie that destroyed everything” and claimed “Mila takes the kids.” Further remarks commented on a “$400 million divorce shocker” and “Ashton’s dark secrets exposed.”

Clearly, Kunis and Kutcher weren’t going to take such speculation regarding their marriage lying down. So the pair decided to directly confront the rumors that they were splitting up. To do so, they filmed a video of themselves mocking the In Touch Weekly cover, before sharing the footage on social media.

In the clip, which appears to have been filmed in a car, Kutcher asks Kunis, “Babe, what’s happening? What’s going on?” In response to her husband’s question, Kunis turns her phone towards the camera to reveal the In Touch Weekly cover. “It’s over between us,” she declares, while somehow managing to keep a straight face.

Feigning a surprised reaction, Kutcher replies, “It’s over between us?” Kunis then nods her head and says, “Yeah.” It appears that the rumored break-up comes as news to Kutcher, as he asks, “Oh my god, what are we going to do?” But Kunis stands by the story, telling him seriously, “I felt suffocated.”

At this point, Kutcher pretends to understand where the rumors have come from. He jokes, “You felt suffocated by me? Oh, I was just so overbearing, wasn’t I?” Kunis seemingly agrees. And to hammer the point further, she says “Also, I took the kids,” while sporting a deadpan expression on her face.

Becoming animated once more, Kutcher replies, “Oh, you took the kids? I don’t get the kids anymore?” Again reading from the cover of the magazine, Kunis explains, “But you had a very dark secret exposed.” Kutcher is shocked and exclaims, “Oh, my gosh! What was the dark secret? Must have been really dark.”

Kunis is, however, unable to reveal what Kutcher’s “dark secret” happens to be. So, she says, “I don’t know.” Then, referring once more to the In Touch Weekly cover, the actress adds, “I only have this photo!” At this point in proceedings, Kunis turns to the camera and breaks her serious demeanor with a smile, confirming that she and Kutcher were joking all along.

With that conclusion, the satirical video comes to an end. However, Kutcher delivered one final parting shot to In Touch Weekly in the caption he posted alongside the clip on Instagram. He wrote, “I guess it’s over, @intouchweekly. Have fun selling magazines this week. Maybe next week my wife will be having twins. For the third time. But who’s counting?”

It’s fair to say that Kunis and Kutcher’s hilarious takedown video was well-received on Instagram. In a matter of weeks the couple’s clip had attracted more than five million views and a number of comments. What’s more, some of the messages the video received came from the pair’s celebrity contemporaries.

In the comments below Kutcher’s Instagram video, actor and podcaster Dax Shepard joked that the break-up rumors had led him to believe he’d had a shot with Kunis. “DAMMIT!!! I was gonna take a run at M.K.! I want a refund!” he wrote. Meanwhile, the singer Demi Lovato commented, “This is amazing. Miss y’all.”

Kutcher and Kunis even received some support from Kutcher’s former step-daughter Rumor Willis. The actress – whose parents are Demi Moore and Bruce Willis – posted a series of facepalm emojis alongside the hashtag, “#fakenews.” And Modern Family actress Sarah Hyland – who has been described as Kunis’ doppelgänger – joked, “I knew it.”

So, it seems that Kunis and Kutcher’s relationship is going strong, in spite of rumors about their marriage in the press. Unfortunately, mind you, tabloids and gossip columns are part and parcel of being celebrities. But luckily for Kunis and Kutcher, at least they have their shared sense of humor to help them laugh off any unsavory speculation.