Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryn Hahn Talk Bad Moms Christmas
Disclosure: Travel and accommodations were provided by STX Entertainment.
How many of us, as moms, have run ourselves ragged trying to make sure our kids have the best Christmas ever? Again.
Because each year has to top the last. The understanding that, “All any mom wants is for her kids to have an insane Christmas.”
Anyone else guilty of this?
Bad Moms Christmas
In Bad Moms Christmas, the holiday is dubbed, “The Big Show.”
The very “impression we put on ourselves to make Christmas perfect.”
Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryn Hahn are together once again and are ready to take Christmas back.
A Bad Moms Christmas (opening November 1st) follows our three under-appreciated and over-burdened women as they rebel against the challenges and expectations of the Super Bowl for moms: Christmas.
And if creating a more perfect holiday for their families wasn’t hard enough, they have to do all of that while hosting and entertaining their own mothers.
By the end of the journey, our moms will redefine how to make the holidays special for all and discover a closer relationship with their mothers.
That’s right, their moms (Christine Baranski, Susan Sarandon, Cheryl Hines) are coming home for the holidays and it’s about to get real.
After all, the grandmas view things a little different.
In fact, as Ruth (Baranski) sees it, “making Christmas special is how moms show their kids they love them.”
She declares that,
“Moms don’t GIVE joy, they ENJOY.”
Last week, I was able to join a group of bloggers for a roundtable interview with Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryn Hahn. I can honestly tell you that all three of these ladies are inspirational, hilarious, intuitive, and even more stunning in person.
Sitting in the room with them felt like a large group of friends talking over coffee. They were so down-to-earth and easy to converse with.
They loved hearing that—through their movies together—they are helping to push forward this incredible “empowering women” movement.
Kristen Bell put it this way,
Do you know how many times I’m here? Once on Earth. One time. So, I want it to be joyful and happy and exciting. And a good portion of that joy, and happiness, and excitement is my kids.
And then every now and again you hit capacity, and you’ve got to switch it up and you’ve got to take a girls’ night. And that’s healthy, and that’s actually healthier than not doing it.
And for some reason, culturally, we’ve decided it is unacceptable to talk about mothers being autonomous women at all, ever.
Self-care, and forgiveness and not feeling ashamed for anything, and just being confident in your decisions is a really important part of life that no one talks about.
She went on later to remind us that it’s “okay to be a paradox sometimes. You can feel guilty and you can also know that you need a night out with your girlfriends.”
Mila Kunis shared her own guilt about going out and leaving the kids at home, but that she has an “amazing partner” that is “constantly pushing [her] to be [her] own human being.”
Once she comes in from an evening out with her friends, she feels great, does it again 6 months later, and has the guilt all over again.
How many of us live this same cycle with the mom guilt? Besides, according to Kristen Bell, “the reason you have that guilt is because you’re doing it right.”
And what about the judgement we all face from other moms? Or the judgement we pass on others?
Kathryn Hahn feels that one of the important messages of both movies is the…
lack of judgment and self-criticism; to try to let that go. Because we are only mommies to these little people for a very short amount of time and you don’t want to spend any excess nonsense worrying about crap.
Like whose cupcakes are better? It just seems… we just spend too much time thinking about other things.
Speaking of other things, we did manage to talk about a few other parts of the film, including the introduction of Justin Hartley to the cast.
Kathryn Hahn gets pretty up-close and personal with him in the film, but everyone agreed that there simply wasn’t enough of him.
I believe Mila put it this way, there’s “never enough Justin.” I mean…
And let’s not forget the new moms that walk into the Bad Moms Christmas! The grandmas are awesome! Every one of them. (Read their interview here).
I found it interesting to learn that each of the moms kind of picked who would play their moms in the movie.
The mother-daughter dynamic added such as new twist to the story and is one that we can all relate to. Each relationship had its own challenges and presented itself differently.
I’m sure the scenes could have come from many of our own lives.
Once again, the talented Kristen Bell summed it up like this,
…what made [the movie] intensely interesting is not just having another situation that we take back, but a situation where we’re taking something back.
And we are thrown up against a wall because our moms come home. And we are not just overworked moms, we are now rebellious teenagers as well.
Again, it is okay to be two things at once.
This time, the moms are on a mission to take Christmas back.
Bad Moms Christmas opens in theaters everywhere on Wednesday, November 1st. Grab your girl friends and get to the theater.
You won’t want to miss this sequel. Bring the tissue because you will laugh until you cry… and then laugh some more.