Olivia Munn is making her acting comeback after having balanced recovering from breast cancer and welcomed a new baby.
In her first acting role in over three years, Munn stars as Samantha Levitt in the new series “Your Friends and Neighbors,” out April 11 on Apple TV+. In the Jon Hamm-led drama, which follows a hedge fund manager who resorts to burglary after he loses his job, Munn’s character is having a secret affair with Hamm’s character.
Reflecting on the actors’ sharing intimate scenes together, Munn told NBC News she was actually more anxious about her body before her double mastectomy last year after she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, luminal B breast cancer.
Post-surgery, she said, she actually feels more confident and values her body more — even though, she said, she initially was worried about her topless scenes in the new series because she didn’t want the scars on her body to distract from her character and the story.
“As insecure as I was going into this about my body post-cancer and post-double mastectomy, I have been more insecure before going through all of this,” Munn said. “I have a deeper appreciation for my body, because my body is the thing that got me through this. I fought through this with everything that I have, so I was a lot less insecure.”
Munn said that after she welcomed her second child, Mei June, with her husband, John Mulaney, in September and recovered from breast cancer, she has become more selective about the projects she wants to work on as an actor.
“I have to manage my time, and I have to think about how much do I want to be away from my children or how much stress this is going to cause me,” she said. “With my particular health situation, my cancer feeds on hormones, so if there’s any cancer that has found its way to stay in my body, then stress hormones can also feed on that.”
She added: “I often ask myself if this situation, this job, this friendship or this dynamic causes me stress and, God forbid, was to feed a cancer in my body and it came back later on in my life, would it have been worth it? And the answer is always no.”
Munn was drawn to the character of Samantha “Sam” Levitt as she was excited about the opportunity to play someone whose life is crumbling around her. Her character is going through a messy divorce and having a secret affair with her friend’s ex-husband.
Munn also thought there was an important and powerful story to tell about how far people will go when they are stripped of everything they value.
“The idea that blind ambition can upend everything that you thought of privilege and wealth and how tight you are holding on to it,” she said, “these are worlds where people seem to have it all and they love people to think they have it all and the facade is so important, but underneath is just chaos, destruction and poor choices. ”
The series follows people living in the exceedingly affluent Westmont Village, but it speaks to the wider issues of greed and the facade to maintain a certain image.
“There seems to be something that money and power does to people,” she said. “Greed doesn’t even describe it; there should be a new word for what this creates inside someone, and it’s this feeling that nothing is ever enough.”
Munn said that when writer-director Jonathan Tropper first approached her for “Your Friends and Neighbors,” she originally signed for only one season.
However, after filming, Tropper approached her for the second season, and she agreed, as she decided that it was such a positive experience working with Hamm and Amanda Peet and that “it made sense for me and my family” to get the opportunity to explore her character further.
