After the premiere of Ashton Kutcher’s Spread (see the trailer here) at Sundance earlier this year, tongues started wagging across the Internet. After all, the movie centers on a freeloading hipster, Nikki (played by Kutcher), who sleeps with wealthy, successful women in order to maintain a privileged lifestyle. But Spread isn’t just about a younger guy’s penchant for “cougars” — though we see plenty of action between Kutcher and older co-star Anne Heche. Nikki also gets an important lesson on love and the sacrifices it sometimes takes to find true love.

Spread opens in theaters August 14, but you can get a sneak peek right here on Hulu with this exclusive clip from the film. We also spoke to Kutcher about the film, his role as producer, and his co-star, Margarita Levieva. Check out the interview below the clip embedded below. — Rebecca Harper (), Editor

Hulu: In addition to starring in Spread, you also produced it. You’re famous for so many different things, what draws you to producing?

Ashton Kutcher: I feel that producing is a just sort of a deeper engagement in the film process. When you act in a film, you go and you give your performance and then so much is done in post and pre-production that manipulates the performance. And I feel like, when you produce a film, you have an opportunity to sort of craft the big picture and details at the same time. In some ways, when you’re telling a story; the context of the character that’s within the story can be manipulated one way or another based on all that’s around that character. When you’re producing, you get a more active hand in the storytelling process. I really enjoy that, and I also appreciate facilitating other actors and performers and creators, and helping facilitate their visions. I just find the act of giving that to be a very rewarding action.

Spread has some racy moments — especially coming from the guy that starred in That ’70s Show. Can you tell us about your character, Nikki?

My character, Nikki, is a guy who came to Los Angeles with this dream of sort of being in the glitz and the glamour and the life of all that the city promises. He finds himself not necessarily having the talent or the wherewithal to get where he wants to go, and so he makes some moral compromises for himself [so he can] feel the effect of the hard work he hasn’t done through an alternative means.

Do you think Nikki is likable?
I think he’s likable enough. I think he’s likable enough to take a journey with him. But I don’t think he’s, you know, outwardly likable. He’s not Barack Obama, I’ll tell you that.

Some of the buzz around this film is that the subject matter hits kind of close to home for you. Why did you take on a role like this, where you’re playing a younger guy who hooks up with older women?

I think that there’s only one older woman in the movie. I think most of the women in the movie are actually younger than him. You know, I don’t know that there’s really a correlation between my personal life and the relationships that I have in my personal life and the relationships that this character has and pursues. So I think that the people that are assuming a correlation — based on the fact that one of the women that he dates is older — are looking at it from a very surface point of view, and maybe they’re only looking at the log line of the film, and that’s probably where they’re drawing those correlations.

The older woman in Spread being Anne Heche, of course. This film also introduces us to Margarita Levieva, who plays another interest of Nikki’s — someone who’s closer to his age. She’s a relative newcomer. Can you tell us about her?

We were looking at this list of people that the cast and directors build that they’re interested in. It usually starts with people that are well known, and different people that you feel can take on the role, that people know of. We had that list put together and we were getting ready to pursue some of those actors. At the same time, you’re always auditioning new people that most people have never heard of or seen. Margarita came into my office and auditioned and was just so incredible and captivating. She carried all of the essential properties of the character, but did it in a very fresh way that none of us had seen before. She had an innocence, but when she turned the corner, had such a manipulative side to her, that we all felt like “Why even pursue the list when we have someone that we know can perform this role in a way that nobody else can do it?” And then she came in and, even though she’s a young actor, she just came in and hit home runs every single day. She was interesting and sexy and smart. She’s a really, really intelligent girl. She’s Russian and speaks English flawlessly. There’s something about that multi-dimensional layer, you feel like she’s hiding something all the time, but you can’t really put your finger on what it is that she’s hiding. And it played really well in the character.

What do you think draws Nikki to Heather (played by Levieva) in the first place? When he meets her, she’s not living the lifestyle he’s grown accustomed to.

I think we’ve all got this preconceived notion of who we should be with in our heads. A lot of people that are single are kind of fooling around with this preconceived notion that the person they’re going to be with is gonna be like this, and they’re gonna be like that, and they’re gonna have this, and they’re gonna have that, and then, eventually somebody comes into your life that pushes back in a way that nobody else pushes back, somebody that challenges you and who you are and what you believe and what you want and, all of a sudden, all of those superficial parameters that you placed on who that person is that you’re going to be with kind of go out the window. Because what we really want deep down, or what I believe our soul wants, is somebody who is going to push us to be a better person. I think that [Heather] does it from the get-go. The scene in the coffee shop — for this guy, every other girl would fall immediately and be invested. And this girl sort of pushes back and says “You know what? I don’t want anything to do with you.” I think that just the very challenge of that makes her more enticing to this guy, because he knows she’s someone that’s not going to tell him just what he wants to hear.

You famously have a legion of fans following you on Twitter these days. How are you going to use Twitter to get fans to see this film?

Well, for me, it’s not about getting my fans to see this movie. If the fans want to see the movie, they’ll see the movie. I think the great thing that Twitter will provide is I can let them know when the movie’s coming out. And I can show people the trailer, so what’s nice about it is, there’s an instant connection with the fans and the people who are already interested in what I’m doing and the work that I’m doing. It’s a really great sort of broadcast tool, where we can talk about the movie in a deeper way and I can show the materials in the movie, and then if they want to see it, they can go see it. For me, it’s not about pushing people to see the movie, it’s making them aware that it’s out there. What the great thing is, while actually in the process of making the trailer for the movie and things like that, I’ve taken different music and posted it on Twitter, and said “Hey, do you guys like this song? Do you think it would fit the trailer for the movie?” and they were like, “Yeah, we love this song. We think it’s great.” So I put the song in the trailer for the movie and it really helped me design the campaign for the movie in an interactive way. In a part, it’s their movie, as well, which I think is very cool.

Hulu had the good fortune to speak with Paul Giamatti (Sideways, Cinderella Man) about his new film Cold Souls, opening August 7th. (See the trailer here.) The film focuses on a man who stumbles upon an advertisement in the New Yorker for a company that promises to extract your soul, and all of the associated problems that go with it. Each person’s reaction to being soul-less is different, but needless to say, Paul’s character (also named Paul Giamatti) goes through a rather unique journey that takes him from the playhouses of New York to the frozen tundra of St. Petersburg, Russia. With a stellar supporting cast and a mind-bending premise, the film promises to be one that keeps you thinking. — Matt Sugarman, Hulu’s Trailer Guy

Hulu: In this film, you play yourself, correct?
Paul Giamatti: Yes, sir. I play a character based on myself.

Did you feel it was easier or harder to play a character based on yourself versus playing any of the other character’s played in your career?
It really just felt to me like a character, like any other character, you know. He just happened to have my name. I was, I guess, sort of conscious that to some extent I was playing on a persona that I kind of have in a couple of movies. So, I was conscious of that but, other than that, it really just felt like a character. I didn’t feel any pressure to be myself, and it is not particularly autobiographical in any way, so I just felt I was supposed to play a particular kind of neurotic, New York actor.

What are your personal thoughts on the soul? This film obviously delves deep into what it is like to have troubles within your soul and then, in a twist, have that soul extracted and traded on the Russian Black Market.
Geez … I don’t know. I’m not a very religious guy and I don’t necessarily believe that it has to be a religious thing. I don’t know that I necessarily believe that there is one. I’m not so sure that people aren’t just made up of a lot of chemicals firing off in their brain that make up a person’s soul in some way. So I don’t know that I necessarily buy that there is such a thing as a soul.

Did you find that your personal feelings on the soul affected how you played having a soul and then having it removed?
No. I could definitely buy into the idea for the movie, sure.

How did you prepare yourself to play being soul-less?
The director [Sophie Barthes] had definite ideas about what she wanted to do. One of the things I thought I’d try to do, I am not sure that it works in the movie, when I first had my soul removed, was at least be a little bit more, sort of, emptied out and blank. Her idea was that in some ways the guy becomes overly confident about things. He is self-involved to begin with. I think he thinks that removing his soul will make him not so self-involved when the fact is that he becomes ten times more self involved. Her idea was to find a way that the guy is just indulgent of any stupid whim that comes in his head. So hopefully there is a discernable difference, but that was kind of the idea.

How do you feel that this film compares to other meta-comedies like Being John Malkovich?
The hardest thing for me about that question is that I have not seen that movie. It sounds to me like there are similar ways to me that it is meta like that and sort of comically philosophical, but unfortunately I have never seen that movie so I don’t know how to compare it.

Of all the absurd scenes that are in the film, what did you feel was the most absurd to play? I thought the most absurd was when the guy who runs the soul extraction company (played by David Strathairn) tells you that you can avoid sales tax by shipping your soul to their warehouse in New Jersey.
The whole thing has a kind of absurd quality to it. The hardest thing for me to do was to do the Russian Chekhov “Vanya” play stuff. That was the thing that made me most nervous … I actually had to be bad at it, which was fairly tricky to think of a way to be bad at it, and that’s where that overconfident thing came into play. The hardest thing about it was to actually be good at it at some point, because the whole idea won’t get sold unless you see a difference between me being bad and being good at it. I don’t know if it was the most absurd thing, but it was the one thing that gave me the most anxiety. Even though [you see] only a little snippet of me being good at it, you actually have to be kind of good at it and I didn’t know if I could be good at it.

You were classically trained in theater. Did that play at all into the scenes where you have to do it on screen?
A: I have actually done a fair deal of Chekhov plays in the past, so I don’t know if that helps or not, but it helped me feel a little more relaxed, thinking that at least I have done some plays by this writer. I think it probably helped a little bit in that regard, helped to calm me down a little bit.

How was it filming in Russia?
It was good. All the Russian actors you see in this movie are Russian, were hired out of Russia, and they all said it was going to be a nightmare. They said that the crews would be horrible and it was all mobbed up and just crazy, but it ended up actually being great. The city [St. Petersberg] is amazing. It’s just an intense place. It’s Russia. There is no more intense country or group of people in the world than Russia. It ended up being great; the crew was great, the city was great. I actually wish I could have stayed longer.

How long were you there for filming?
I was only there filming for 10 days. The rest of the production team was there for a lot longer, but I was only there for the 10 days.

Any favorite moments when you were over there?
I don’t know man, it was crazy. There was a scene in the movie that got cut that was one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen. There was a bear, a trained bear, on the sidewalk. Like a homeless guy had a pet bear with him. It had on a diaper and he would give it a baby bottle to drink from. We actually filmed me just standing there watching it. It unfortunately didn’t make it into the movie, but it was one of the more bizarre things I have ever seen. It was a (expletive) BEAR and it was just chained to a lamp post drinking out of a baby bottle.

How big was the bear?
It was a young bear, but it was the size of a big dog, like a Newfoundland dog or something. It was a BEAR, man. It was really intense. You could go right up to the thing and pet it. The guy who owned it looked more like a bear than the bear. He was this big fat dude that was hairy and just hammered and just crazy. There was just something very, very Russian about it.

During the course of the film, do we see any actors or actresses who may not have been mainstream before this film and might see a nice pop in their careers?
These Russian actors are kind of amazing in it, but in Russia, these actors are HUGE. The woman in the movie, Dina Korzun, is like the Meryl Streep of Russia. It would be nice if these actors ended up in more American movies. The woman that plays the Russian mobster’s girlfriend [Katheryn Winnick] is kind of amazing because she isn’t Russian. She is Canadian and she learned Russian for the movie. It’s kind of amazing that she pulled off being a Russian. Hopefully she gets more out of this.

Any big projects coming down the road for you?
I am doing a movie next with Dustin Hoffman called Barney’s Version, which shoots in Rome and Montreal.

One last question, are you a Hulu user? If so, what shows do you watch?
I don’t know much, but a friend of mine took me on there the other day. You have an old Japanese TV Show, Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot, a really bizarre old Japanese kids show that I hadn’t seen since I was a child. I was amazed.

Hulu: Thanks so much for taking the time out to talk to us today.
No problem at all. Have a good one.