Olivia Munn Looks Back on "The Newsroom"

[JamesG]

When in your career do you feel like the hamster wheel was spinning most out of control?

2010 to 2011 was an incredible period of my life, career-wise. I was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Soon after, I was on The Newsroom. At that point, there were all these opportunities.

The first one that came around was Magic Mike. So there was this little trifecta of working with Jon Stewart, Aaron Sorkin and Steven Soderbergh. A lot of different offers were coming through, and I started not knowing what I should take. A lot of rom-coms were coming through.

The hamster wheel really affected my thinking process, because I was not able to get a grasp on it. I didn’t know where to go next.





Well, to that point, your career hasn’t followed a traditional path: Attack of the Show to The Daily Show to The Newsroom to X-Men and now Your Friends & Neighbors.

Was that by accident or design?

Complete accident. I just took advantage of the opportunities that were in front of me. And some didn’t feel like the right thing. I would say no to some things that I probably should have said yes to.

It does kind of feel like a buffet in a way. I’m like, “I’ll take this one.” I do wish that I was more curated. When I first got big opportunities, I wish I had sat down and made decisions for myself. A lot of times, the representatives or agents would bring you stuff, like, “Hey, do you want to do these things?”

There wasn’t real guidance on, “What do you want to do with your career? What kind of work do I do? Let’s aim for that.” Because I think I would have really enjoyed that. I don’t remember a lot of stuff I worked on. I remember a handful.





What do you remember the most?

The Newsroom. I never really had a significant acting job before. I had a sitcom on NBC [Perfect Couples], but this was a different level. I was the only one who wasn’t a Broadway-caliber actor. I just really wanted to nail it. For that character, I thought, “I’m gonna play it as if I was a man acting out this job.”

I’m not going to fall into the tropes of being hysterical or being like apologetic or meek or bitchy or boss lady-ish. I just wanted to play it straight. And yes, women can play it that way. But, at the time, a lot of the references that you could pull from with women were just different. It felt like we had to be a caricature of what we thought women would be.





You’ve told a story about a visiting Newsroom director who gave you some objectively bad notes — suggesting that your character be a bit more like what you’re talking about, fawning over a man.

You didn’t take the notes and later found out that he’d bad-mouthed you to keep you from getting another job. You still booked that job, but I’m curious what the lesson of that experience was.

Obviously, you should be able to disagree with any notes. But you don’t know how people are going to respond to that. It just feels like an uneasy equation to me.

I learned from watching other actors get notes that when they give you a note, you nod your head. You say, “OK, got it.” Then you just do what you want to do. They come to you with another note and you go, “Got it!” And then you just do what you want to do. Eventually they’ll be like, “I guess she can’t do it. She doesn’t have the ability.”

It’s playing the game a bit more. And I should be able to speak up for myself and I should be able to draw the line, but we cannot. I can’t change the world and I cannot change how women have been portrayed and received for however long we’ve been on earth. So I’ve realized that I’m going to handle this situation in a way that is going to be the best outcome for me.

I used to see so many other actors do it, and I’d think, “Why are you not taking the note? I can’t believe you’re being so indignant.” Then I realized it’s a way to protect your art and your choices with a character. I hope I have helped more actresses learn this.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv...rs-1236555303/