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Olivia Munn thought she was done with acting. An aggressive breast cancer diagnosis followed by treatment and then a hysterectomy with a baby in between will do that to you.
Add another baby via surrogate to the mix and there’s no denying her life has been turned on its head these past few years.
“It’s so crazy to think that I’m sitting here with two amazing babies,” Munn recently told People magazine in an intimate and candid interview. “I’m just so happy and grateful, and I’m really proud of what I’ve been able to do. I didn’t know how much strength I had inside me.”
From the other side of the fence, many have called it inspirational. And despite her busy and at times stressful personal life, Munn decided to come out of retirement for a role that’s put her back on the map.
A mum to Malcolm, 3, and 9-month-old Méi, it was her kids and husband, comedian John Mulaney, 42, who inspired her to hold a script again.
“I love acting, but John loves performing more. Nothing I had worked on in the past five or six years felt like it was worth me taking time away from my family,” she admitted.
“I started thinking for the first time that maybe I need to be behind the camera, not that that’s not also hard work, but putting myself in front of the camera felt a lot more vulnerable. I wanted to protect myself.”
But getting in front of the camera was in the stars, and Your Friends & Neighbours was the series that made it happen. “It was the thing I needed to energise me,” she told People. “When I told John I was taking it, he was just so happy. I had one more surgery to do, and by that point we knew that Méi was on her way. I just felt like I was ready to let go of the fears and worries that I had.”
In the show, the 44-year-old plays Sam Levitt, a woman on the precipice of divorce, who’s sleeping with a friend’s ex, played by Jon Hamm. “She was sitting on the bed and just lit up when she told me about this role,” Mulaney told People, adding he was “just blown away” by her tenacity and talent.
“Then Malcolm and I and then Méi Méi got the chance to see our Olivia just expand and give her whole mind and heart to us and to doing this show: to see her come back from such a long break, to watch her prepare for this role while still in the middle of exhausting cancer treatment, and then like everyone else to watch week after week as she crafts this totally original, really funny, really staggering character in Sam,” he gushed.
The love between Munn and Mulaney is evident – and while they only married last year, they’d already proved they are in it for better or worse, and in sickness and health. The couple began dating in 2021 – shortly after Mulaney and his ex-wife, Anna Marie Tendler, had separated, and in the wake of his rehab stay for alcohol and cocaine addiction. Later that year, Malcolm was born.
“I really had no idea what kind of a father he would be, what kind of a friend he would be to me … but the day Malcolm was born, John’s whole world just lit up,” Munn recalled. “Somebody once said to me, ‘The first child will look like whichever parent needed them the most.’ And Malcolm looks just like John. Not to be too saccharine, but looking at John looking at Malcolm, I could see all that healing happening.”
Back in 2021, Mulaney told viewers on Late Night with Seth Meyers that Munn saved his life, literally. “She’s kind of held my hand through that hell,” he admitted, referring to his recovery. “It’s a very, very lucky thing to have met this woman.”
