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Olivia Munn revealed she rejected a financial settlement of “7 figures” from a movie studio after she reported a “traumatic” situation that occurred on the set of a film she was working on.
Munn opened up about the troubling experience on the Feb. 18 episode of Monica Lewinsky’s podcast, “Reclaiming.”
“I had to file complaints with the studio, and there’s a lot of other little things that go along with it, but it got to this place where I was offered a lot of money,” Munn said. “Seven figures to accept I guess their apology and them taking acknowledgement of it, but it came along with an NDA.”
Munn did not disclose which film set the alleged incident took place, but she made it clear that she kept quiet for a long time, choosing not to speak publicly about the event because she “just wanted to move past it all.” She also refrained from going into “specific things” when discussing the experience with Lewinsky.
What ultimately stopped the actress from accepting the offer was a sense of moral unease.
“I just felt it was so wrong,” Munn explained. “And at this time specifically, this was in the beginning of the MeToo/TimesUp [movement].”
She added, “This was like the reckoning, the Harvey Weinstein reckoning that began it all. This was that time period, and this was when people were targeting anyone who signed an NDA saying, ‘Oh, you only did it for the money,’ so I was afraid that my voice and speaking up would reverse any kind of validity to my voice.”
Munn also feared that the studio would eventually leak details about the deal. After meeting with lawyers arguing each side of the issue, she trusted her instincts and ultimately rejected the offer.
“We walked out of there,” Munn recalled. “And I remember feeling so proud when I walked out—so proud of myself.”
The actress, who shares her three-year-old son, Malcolm, and 5-month-old daughter, Méi, with her husband, John Mulaney, also reflected on the role her emotions played during the ordeal.
“That comes into the feistiness of not thinking things through and being so upset and frustrated that this would be the offer to me,” she confessed. “I did not think about negotiating. I did not think about anything besides how disrespectful that was.”
While Munn stands by her choice, she admitted that her anger influenced her decision-making process.
“Look, was it the right thing to do and do the people in my life think that I did the right thing and are proud of me for that? Yes,” she said. “It’s not that I wouldn’t have ended up with the same decision, it’s that I made that decision based on anger, and that is something I had to learn how to do rein in and use for my benefit.”
Munn has spoke about past troubling on-set experiences before. In 2018, she made headlines when she successfully pushed 20th Century Fox to remove a scene from the movie “The Predator,” after discovering that actor Steven Wilder Striegel, who appeared in the scene, was a registered sex offender.
“I kind of feel like I’m the one going to jail,” she told Vanity Fair at the time, adding, “I didn’t go to jail, I didn’t put this guy on our set. I had this scene deleted.”
Striegel served six months in prison after pleading guilty to two felonies.
