Ashton Kutcher finally clarifies his showering habits nearly five years after sparking hygiene firestorm

Ashton Kutcher is finally setting the record straight about how much he showers after leaving fans aghast at claims that he does a less-than-thorough job of cleaning himself years earlier.

While speaking to People, the 47-year-old actor called the uproar over his bathing habits 'the craziest thing,' via Entertainment Weekly.

Kutcher, who stars on the upcoming Hulu body horror series The Beauty, tried to emphasize that he regularly showers during a conversation with his costars Anthony Ramos and Jeremy Pope.

Kutcher has been tormented by fans for nearly five years after the That '70s Show star and his wife Mila Kunis, 42, set off their hygiene firestorm during a 2021 appearance on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast.

'It was the craziest thing of all time,' Kutcher said as he mused on the podcast fallout. 'We made a comment at one point, and people were like, "Does he stink? Does he smell?"'

Ramos and Pope apparently had no idea what Kutcher was referencing, so he tried to get them up to speed as quickly as possible.

'There was a comment on a podcast, so long ago… and people are like, "They don't shower,"' he explained. 'I'm like, "I shower, I go to the gym, I shower."'

Ramos laughed and added his two cents: 'I can confirm my boy showers.'

Kutcher and his wife stirred up their bathing controversy in 2021 after Kunis opened up about growing up with few modern conveniences in the Soviet Union 1980s, before her family moved to the US when she was seven.

'I didn't have hot water growing up as a child, so I didn't shower much anyway,' she said of her time growing up in Soviet Russia.

Later, she told Shepard that her own upbringing influenced how much she bathed her and Kutcher's children, daughter Wyatt, 11, and son Dimitri, nine.

'When I had children, I also didn't wash them every day....' Kunis shared. 'I wasn't that parent that bathed my newborns — ever.''

Then Kutcher tried to jokingly one-up her by adding, 'Now, here's the thing: If you can see the dirt on them, clean them. Otherwise, there's no point.'

In the same podcast, Kunis dove into her current bathing philosophy.

'I don’t wash my body with soap every day,' she said. 'But I wash pits and t**s and holes and soles.'

Then Ashton spelled out his own routine. 

'I wash my armpits and my crotch daily, and nothing else ever,' he said. 'I got a bar of Lever 2000 that just delivers every time. Nothing else.'

Although Kutcher stopped short of clarifying if he was being completely serious about never touching soap to the rest of his body, some fans were quick to assume that he was living in a state of perpetual filth.

Prior to tying the knot with his former That '70s Show costar, Kutcher had been married from 2005 to 2013 to Demi Moore, who is 16 years his senior.

He recently made rare comments about his ex-wife on the publicity tour for his upcoming series The Beauty, which bears a striking resemblance to The Substance, the acclaimed 2024 body horror film that earned Moore an Academy Award nomination.

The series stars Evan Peters and Rebecca Hall as a pair of FBI agents investigating deaths linked to a drug known as The Beauty.

The treatment, which has effects that are transmitted sexually, gives affected individuals increased attractiveness through changes to their genetic structure, but it also introduces underlying conditions that are eventually fatal.

Kutcher stars as a tech billionaire connected to the mysterious drug, while Ramos plays an enforcer working for his corporation, while Pope stars as a regular person drawn into the deadly conspiracy

The story reminded fans of The Substance, in which Moore starred as an aging actress who began taking a drug that allowed her to spend part of her time in a younger alternate body.

However, once she suffered stomach-churning side effects once she tried to extended the drug's potency.

Although Kutcher didn't comment on the similarities between his new show — which was created by Ryan Murphy and Matt Hodgson — he did share praise for his ex-wife's work in The Substance.

'I mean, one, Demi's performance in The Substance, obviously she got extraordinary accolades. I'm so proud of her. She killed it,' he told Entertainment Tonight.

Four years after his 2015 marriage to Kunis, Moore shared a blistering portrait of their time together in her memoir Inside Out.

She accused him of having been unfaithful to her twice and alleged that they had a pair of threesomes, writing that she was 'addicted' to him. 

The Few Good Men actress also recalled that she fell off the wagon after she suffered a miscarriage while six months pregnant with Kutcher's baby. 

Moore had been 20 years sober but resumed drinking to cope with her loss after Kutcher said: 'I don't know if alcoholism is a real thing,' she claimed. 

As Moore embarked on a publicity tour for the book and her claims about Kutcher circulated, he addressed the matter on Twitter. 

'I was about to push the button on a really snarky tweet. Then I saw my son, daughter, and wife and I deleted it,' he wrote the day Inside Out was published. 

He struck a more conciliatory tone a year later, insisting there was 'no badness' between him and Moore and adding that although they 'don't hang out', he remained in contact with her daughters by Bruce Willis, on WTF with Marc Maron.