New York – When Olivia Munn won her role on “Your Friends & Neighbors”, the new Apple TV +series was an important moment for the actor. In parallel with stars like Jon Hamm and Amanda Peet, Munn would appear in his first series of series in progress in several years-a period of time in which she had waited for the cocovio-19 pandemic, which became a mother, experienced almost a year of postpartum anxiety and took steps to leave the game.
But “Your friends and neighbors“Is also the show on which Munn worked when she finished her treatment for breast cancer – where she shared for the first time with anyone outside of her closest confidants that she had received her diagnosis a few months earlier and had undergone the last of a series of surgeries a few days before her start of shooting.
Now, while the show makes its debut Friday, Munn reacts to life as a public personality – the one who wants to share her stories on life as a parent and wife and, yes, surviving cancer who had made alarming progress before he was even detected.
But, at the same time, Munn is someone who does not want special treatment or children's bodies because of what she has experienced.
“This is how I manage life,” said Munn in an interview last week. “I don't like when it's sugar. I don't like to be soothed. “
She added: “By going through a year of cancer and five surgeries, the objective is not to be known as a sick person. The goal is to go to the other side and return to normal.”
Olivia Munn returns to television with “Your Friends & Neighbors” by Apple TV +.
(Apple)
During a visit to New York, Munn, 44, impatiently lived in her identity outside the camera as a mother. She showed photos and videos of her 3 year old son, Malcolm, and her 6 month old daughter, Méi, who was in Los Angeles with their father, John Mulaythe actor and the end of the evening who is Munn's husband.
Munn shared original stories from the first days of Méi, such as the way she forgot to put a sound machine in her daughter's room for almost two months (“it's like not putting pajamas on your baby,” said Munn with sorrow), and sister pieces at the house Munn explained.
Barely two years ago, Munn recovered from months of anxiety attacks that followed the birth of Malcolm. She had not worked for some time and did not feel satisfied by her acting career. While she was considering a transition to publishing, production or writing, she said: “I called my agents and my manager and I said:” I finished being in front of the camera – don't put anything for anything. “”
But she changed her heart when we offered her a role in “Your friends and neighbors”, A dark comedy drama Created by Jonathan Tropper (“Banshee”, “”Warrior»). On this series, Hamm, the former Emmy Award “Mad Men”, plays Andrew, a director of hedged hedges and a divorced father who begins to rob his own wealthy community to maintain his sumptuous lifestyle who becomes his friend with advantages.
“I called my agents and my manager and I said,” I finished being in front of the camera – don't put anything on me, “said Olivia Munn, but when she was offered her role in” your friends and neighbors “, she changed her heart.
(Jsquared / Times photography)
Munn, who grew up in a family in a family who often moved during her childhood, said that she was enjoying “your friends and neighbors” for her scathing comment on the highest class in American society.
“There is negligence with which they live their lives,” said Munn. “They feel impermeable in the world and it's so fascinating to see these people collapse.” Her own character, said Munn, was “a survivor – she will do anything to maintain her place and take care of her children”.
A few months later, Munn received news that would change his life in a much more drastic way. Although genetic screening and recent mammography have returned clearly for her, she has passed an online exam called the Tyrer-Cuzick's risk assessment test. The 20% result on this test is considered a high risk of breast cancer – the munn score was 37.3%.
After having undergone an MRI, Munn had a conversation with his doctor who, to date, describes with amazed disbelief. “I didn't let her sit,” recalls Munn. “I did the thing I have always seen in the movies. I said, “Is it cancer? She said, “Yes, it's cancer”. And as she talks to me, I think it happens to Me? “”
Munn compared the revelation at the past moments of her life when she had been in car accidents and remembered that she felt: “I don't want to be here.”
“It's like shouting, but no one can hear you, no matter how much I cry,” she explained. “No matter how much I beg or cry or negotiate.
Every few days that followed, Munn learned new and more disastrous development. She tried to tell them in the interview: “You have breast cancer, it's stadium 1,” she said. “We found more tumors. It's multi-quadrant. Multifocal. It is now bilateral. We found a mandarin size section. ”
“It's like shouting, but no one can hear you, it doesn't matter how much I cry,” said Olivia Munn about her diagnosis of breast cancer. “No matter how much I beg or cry or negotiate.
(Jsquared / Times photography)
Whenever she was told that an appearance of her Luminal breast cancer B Was rare, Munn said that she had learned that “rare is not a good thing”.
“Are you like, when are the bad news stop?” She said.
Munn's life has become an exhausting diet of operations and treatments. A double mastectomy. Dissection of lymph nodes. Reconstructive surgery. A nipple delay procedure. Hormonally induced menopause. Long periods of rest and recovery followed each time. After her final surgery, an oophorectomy and a partial hysterectomy, she took a week to recover, then started filming “your friends and neighbors” in Mount Kisco, NY
Just before this trip, a Munn, of course, phoned Tropper to tell him about his diagnosis and his treatment against cancer. Munn said, “I must tell you that I'm fine. I can work, don't worry. I will be there. I will introduce myself. I was nervous that he had healing – “Oh, I have this sick person on the set.” “”
Tropper, the creator of the series, said in an interview that his telephone conversation with Munn was the first he had learned his illness. “When someone tells you that, you just tell them that you hope they are doing well and that their health is what is most important. We are committed to doing what we had to do in the series to make sure that she was resting when she needed to rest and that we could do what we could with her schedule to make sure she had the time she needed for her health.”
He added: “It was not a terribly difficult conversation at all, because it is so incredibly candid on this subject – and almost everything.”
Tropper said that Munn would be back in season 2 of “your friends and neighbors”, which Apple has already renewed. “We initially planned this character as a character of a season,” he said, “but after working with her for a little while, I think we had a consensus at all levels, we wanted it.”
Peet said she started working with Munn in the series after the actor was made public on her cancer experience. “I admired it a lot to have come and use it as a way to help others, simultaneously by crossing it itself and getting used to what had happened to him,” she said.
“She has a very natural fraternal instinct,” added Peet, who plays Andrew Mel's ex-wife. “It contains multitudes. She has a lot of joie de vivre. She wants to drink all the marrow of the moment. I have the feeling that she has always been like this.”
Even with the support of his colleagues, Munn fought with other challenges on a program that often depicts his character in intimate situations. “I was really nervous at the idea of making sex scenes because I have a lot of scars,” she said. “Scars that can be seen in the clothes and scars that you would only know if I was completely naked.”
Following the procedures she had to undergo, “I was really nervous at the idea of making sex scenes because I have many scars,” said Olivia Munn.
(Apple)
At the same time, Munn estimated that these scenes were crucial to understanding the dynamics between her and the characters of Hamm. “She wants something much more of him than he wants to give and their only link is by sex,” said Munn. “I really wanted it to be represented. I wanted sex scenes to feel like sex scenes – I wanted them to feel visceral and intense and do not hold back at all. ”
With the help of an intimacy coordinator and a lot of soul research, Munn succeeded in these performances. “I felt insecure, but each time I did, I felt better,” she said.
Far from feeling as if her body betrayed her by falling ill, she said: “I am so grateful for my body because it made me pass.”
Munn brings back with gratitude that she is without cancer, but with this gratitude, she said, comes the feeling that “I will look over my shoulder for the rest of my life”. But she can also think about her ordeal now and laugh, let's say, A monologue that Mulaney interpreted About his trial and trial with a post-processing phenomenon called “Brain Cancer” in a recent broadcast of his series of late Netflix evening, “Everybody's Live”.
Although Munn said that she had not consulted Mulaney on this routine, she explained: “I trust her implicitly. I love his comedy. He loves our family and he loves me. We make so many jokes on my trip through it and that I am.
Munn constantly remembers how closely her past and his present are linked, and how the person is today is influenced by the person he was in the past – even in everyday travel with her family at the Sunset Gower studios where Mulaney is currently recording the HBO series where she was part of her Munn distribution.
Describing one of these recent trips with Mulaney and their children, Munn said: “On our way in his offices, we go through a poster of” The Newsroom “, and Malcolm will be like,” it's mom “. Then we pass and he sees, as, Viola Davis, and he says: “It's mom”.
