In dealing with anxiety, overcoming an abusive stepfather, facing judgment throughout her career, and surviving breast cancer, Olivia Munn has repeatedly witnessed the power of agency.
It is why she declares her aversion to the phrase “everything happens for a reason” in a powerful interview for Bustle’s The Entertainers Issue.
“There’s this expression that I have always hated,” says Munn: “Everything happens for a reason … There are some people who die very lonely. Some people who have a drug addiction, and relapse, and die in the middle of the street, in the middle of the night. Well, what was the reason? Not everything works out.”
Munn’s quest to retain agency – whether that means overcoming anxiety, being willing to let go of certain things, setting her own parameters for her career as an actress, or refusing to hide from superficialities on the set of “The Newsroom” – have defined what has been a successful career and a successful journey into motherhood.
For example, Munn notes in the new interview that the original “Newsroom” costume designer advised her to dress in frumpy clothing, noting “you don’t want people to judge you, to think you’re trying to flaunt anything.”
“Later, when Hope [Hanafin] came on as designer, I explained that I actually wanted people to judge me the second I walked on screen,” shares Munn. “I wanted them to make assumptions. And then, once I started speaking Sorkin’s dialogue, to question why they’d judged me in the first place.”
At times, agency can be about standing up for oneself. It can be about relentlessly standing up for what is right. It can manifest as being combative.
“The way other people saw me — the names or labels they gave me — even if I fought back against them, they still ended up becoming part of my identity,” reflects Munn on growing up as half-White, half-Asian. “So, a small part of my personality became a big part of my personality — which was the personality to fight, to not give a sh*t.”
But “To not give a sh*t,” that last part, is critical. Because, in Munn’s worldview, agency is not just about asserting oneself. It is about not letting others make you think you have to. It is about not letting others make you feel as if you have to explain every decision, or accept every label.
“For the last 15 years, I’ve really tried to be a better person and tried to stand up for what I think is right. And it’s something that I continue to do. But I’m a much calmer person now.”
In the engaging interview, Munn also talks about her husband John Mulaney, her life as a mother, her experience overcoming breast cancer, and her return to acting in Apple TV+’s “Your Friends and Neighbors.”
