Unless the critical winds shift drastically, it seems as if the viral video of Mila Kunis’s odd and delightful interview with a rookie BBC reporter during a promotional tour for “Oz the Great and Powerful” will be the best publicity that movie will receive. The encounter starts as a halting, awkward version of a rote celebrity interview, but quickly veers off-script. Kunis and the reporter, Chris Stark, end up chewing the fat about beer, soccer, and Stark’s friends’ weird nicknames. Kunis is relaxed and engaging and encourages Stark to stay away from his planned questions. At one point, instructed by an off-camera publicist to talk about the movie, she rolls her eyes and spiels off a list of the answers that she gives to every reporter. The interview-within-an-interview reminds us just how unusual this interaction is. Most of the questions people ask celebrities are stand-ins for what we really want to know: “What’s it like to hang out with you? Are you really just like us?” But Kunis is, hanging out and acting, yes, pretty much just like us.

The video has drawn a lot of praise and attention to Kunis. An ABC reporter said that it proves Kunis is “as sweet as she looks.” Vulture called it “career-defining” and ran a piece, by Heather Havrilesky, trying to puzzle out the contours of the unscripted “carefree tomboy schtick” that has elevated Kunis into the Jennifer Lawrence ranks of likability. Several outlets mentioned how it was really nice of Kunis to help out the nervous reporter.

But, for all the talk about Kunis, perhaps we should take a moment to appreciate Chris Stark. After all, he’s the one who sets the tone for the interview, declaring up front that he’s “petrified” and then lobbing out a clumsy but audacious opening question: “In the nicest possibly way, did you enjoy being ugly for once? Because, generally, like, you know, you’re hot.” Kunis eggs him on, but it’s Stark who moves the conversation further and further out of bounds, bringing up newly irrelevant topics and offering unsolicited details about his life and interests. Of the pair, he’s actually the one who’s more charming and fun to watch.

Great interviewers often describe their craft as something between a dance, a seduction, and a magic trick. You have Truman Capote spinning webs of trust and charisma around his subjects. You have Joan Didion, dependent on being “so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests.” You have Janet Malcolm using the fine touch of her “Japanese technique” to elicit information and draw people out of themselves. And then you have Chris Stark, talking about eating chicken, scoring “massive lad points,” and “dropping trou” at his friend Dicko’s wedding. And it works. The result is great. Good for him.