In 2011, Ashton Kutcher starred alongside Natalie Portman in No Strings Attached, a romantic comedy directed by Ivan Reitman which revolved around two friends who decide to make a pact to have a “no strings attached” relationship, without falling in love with each other. Just a few months later, Friends with Benefits was released. The romantic comedy starred Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis as… two friends who decide to start having sex with the belief that it won’t impact their platonic friendship. The familiarity between these two movies has become a running gag, particularly as Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis began dating the very next year. It turns out that Kutcher is all too aware that No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits are essentially the same movie.
Ashton Kutcher recently had Natalie Portman on his Peloton exercise series, Our Future Selves, and they joked about the similarity between No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits. “I think the first time we really started hanging out is when we shot No Strings together,” Kutcher said, with Portman responding, “Who would’ve thought, 20 years later, we’d be on a Peloton together.” Kutcher continued, “It’s also weird because my wife was shooting basically the same movie, called Friends with Benefits.” There it is. Portman added, “Yes, and Mila and I had just shot Black Swan together right before. So we were all making out with each other.“
Ashton Kutcher’s Peloton series documents the actor training to run the 2022 TCS New York City Marathon later this year. Along with Peloton instructors and some special guests (such as Natalie Portman), the series also serves to raise funds and awareness for Kutcher’s nonprofit, Thorn, which builds technology to defend children from sexual exploitation and eliminate child sexual abuse material from the internet. “Running this marathon is all about raising funds and awareness for my nonprofit, Thorn,” Kutcher said. “Protecting kids from sexual abuse is something I’ve been working on for a decade and much like a marathon we will only reach our goal through dedication, endurance, and discipline. Having Peloton instructors get me marathon ready has been incredible and creating this series has been a blast. I’ve talked to brilliant actors, musicians, writers, athletes and doctors about what keeps them going and their ‘why.’“
Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis will be reuniting once again for That ’90s Show alongside Topher Grace, Laura Prepon and Wilmer Valderrama, all of whom will be reprising their characters from That ’70s Show. In the battle of the exceptionally similar rom-coms, who wins between No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits?