Ashton Kutcher says he still loves ex Demi Moore's daughters: 'I helped raise them through their adolescence'

Ashton Kutcher is opening up about his relationship with ex-wife Demi Moore’s daughters.

A lot happened between the exes, as detailed in Moore’s shocking 2019 memoir, but Kutcher, 41, said on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast that he’s still is on good terms with Rumer, 31, Scout, 28, and Tallulah Willis, 26. After all, Kutcher helped “raise” them.

“Ahhh — we don’t hang out,” Kutcher, who is now remarried to his That ‘70s Show co-star Mila Kunis with two kids, said when asked about Moore. “It’s all good, [but] we don’t hang out.”

Read more: Demi Moore's daughters speak on her sobriety relapse: 'A monster came'

As for her daughters, “I make a really conscious effort to stay in touch with the girls,” Kutcher revealed, noting that “it was eight years” of their young lives during which he was a step-father figure.

“Tallulah was 8 or 9 [and] Rumer was 12 or 13 when we first started dating” in 2003, explained Kutcher, who was just 25 when he started dating a 41-year-old Moore. “When we were getting divorced” — they split in 2011 and their divorce was final two years later — “Tallulah was graduating high school.”

Of his time with Moore, which by her own account was turbulent due to her addiction and other factors, including the couple losing a pregnancy, Kutcher said, “I was helping raise teenage girls through their adolescence.”

And they still have a part of his heart, he admitted. “I love them. I’m never going to stop loving them and respecting them and honouring them and rooting for them to be successful in whatever they are pursuing,” he said.

But doing it while not stepping on their dad Bruce Willis’s toes.

“I was never trying to be their father,” Kutcher said of the relationship. “I always had respect and honoured Bruce,” whom he called “a brilliant human being and a wonderful man. So if they don’t want an engagement with me, I’m not going to force it upon them. But they all do and it’s great.”

Kunis previously said on Maron’s podcast that Kutcher “was younger” when he got together with Moore — in his 20s — “but he loved those kids.”

As Rumer’s stepdad, Kutcher helped her buy a house in 2009. That detail was made public in 2018, when he signed over full ownership to her.

That relationship seems to be the most public out of the trio. For instance, Kutcher and Rumer — who have just 10 years between them — were photographed grabbing dinner together last June. In 2015, when Rumer wrote an essay about bullying, he was quick to publicly applaud her. That same year, he urged his social media following to vote for her when she competed on Dancing With the Stars.

Read more: Jon Cryer denies losing his virginity to Demi Moore after she reveals '80s fling

But make no mistake, Kutcher and Moore’s relationship provided hurt for the girls as well. When Moore’s book came out last year, Rumer said she didn’t recognise her mother when she was with Kutcher because the G.I. Jane star lost herself. Moore started drinking again after decades of sobriety and agreed to threesomes with Kutcher because she thought it would make him think she was fun. Moore said she had an “addiction” to Kutcher and was in a bad place when she miscarried their baby at six months.

Rumer said on Red Table Talk last year that she was puzzled watching the “infallible woman” who raised her and was “always in control” suddenly “not be in control around a man.” She remembered thinking of her mom: “Who is this person? I don’t know who this is.” It also hurt that Moore was “so desperate” to have a child with Kutcher. She said it made her feel like she wasn’t enough and was a big “part of the reason I moved out” of Moore and Kutcher’s home.

Tallulah, who was the only one at home toward the worst part of Moore and Kutcher’s relationship, expressed a similar sentiment in the same interview.

“Watching the behaviour with Ashton in those years, because everybody left the house and it was just me living there, I felt very forgotten,” she said. “And I developed and nurtured a narrative that she didn’t love me — and I truly believed it. And I know that she does — 100 percent — but in that moment, you’re hurt. And you can’t fathom that someone that loves you would do that to you and would choose others more than you.”

Moore was estranged from all three of her daughters after her split with Kutcher. But after she treated her addiction and emotional problems, the daughters reconciled.