Twenty years later, Kunis’s take on her profession is still amazingly free of bullshit. Sometimes she seems more like a corporate consultant in town for a five-month stint to increase efficiency at a widget plant. (She explains the shoot’s location with the phrase "We were grandfathered into the tax break.") When I mention this, Kunis releases a huge snorting laugh and breaks into a parody of a sultry actress: "This is my art. This is what I live for... No! I love what I do, but my theory is that it’s people who doubt what they do and want to prove it to you, they’re like ’It’s art. I create art. It’s art, art, art.’ I’m like, Holy shit, are you fucking kidding me? I run around and pretend I’m someone else for twelve hours; I record Family Guy [she voices Meg]. Then I get to go home and watch Jersey Shore."

The restaurant refuses to charge us, and Kunis drops a crisp $100 bill for a tip. We move to an organic drugstore in search of her favorite cough syrup, Buckley’s ("It’s dis-gus-ting. I end up chugging the shit out of it"), then to her apartment, where the healing project begins to careen off the rails.

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Kunis starts making us hot tea when she gets a better idea. "Let’s get some Cabernet going," she says. "It’ll make you feel better and it will make you drunk." She hands me a Grgich Hills Cabernet Franc (retail $50) to open, then sniffs the bottle and declares it "perfect for boiling." Into the saucepan it goes, followed by an avalanche of green-tea powder ("It’s vitamins!"), two gelcaps of fish oil ("What’s the difference? It’s all going to end up liquefied and syrupy"), apple-cider vinegar ("’Cause that’s just always good for you"), and Ayurvedic chai. "See," she says, "at least I didn’t give you the women’s bone vitamin." The result is a kind of glogg from hell. For a moment, we both admire the roiling potion. The melted gelcaps have coated the saucepan’s bottom, while the released fish oil blots the surface.

"If I’m drinking this," I say, "you’re drinking this." Kunis nods. "Yeah, I’ll get wasted with you on this wine. Fuck it. It’s good for you!" Suddenly she remembers something and dashes to the freezer. "I have vodka and I have tequila. What do you think kills germs better?"

"Aw, shit," is all I manage in response as Kunis upends half a bottle of Ketel One into the mix. "There. Healthy! This will kill everything." We pour the deadly liquid into two large mugs, settle in the living room, and clink. It’s not bad. In fact, it’s great. I begin to feel much better, which is to say I’m too soused and besotted to remember I’m sick.

Far too soon, it’s 6 p.m., which is close to Kunis’s bedtime. The shooting days work on a sliding schedule, and tomorrow she has to wake up at 3 a.m. to be on the set at four. As I wobble to the door, Kunis’s plan for the remaining hour is to read Stieg Larsson, fall asleep to local news, or give Breaking Bad a try on Netflix and pass out to that. "What a horrible, funny life," she says, sounding either wistful or just mellow from the fish-oil green-tea vodka Cabernet. "But then I get to fly out and go home. It’s not so bad." She repeats the line a few times. "It’s not so bad." She could be meaning Detroit or stardom or life in general. "It’s not so bad being here."

_Michael Idov wrote about a never-ending film shoot in the November issue of _GQ.

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