"I wanted to be at G4, doing what I was doing, and also be able to pursue acting and other creative outlets," said Munn, wistfully explaining how she came to part ways with the network that launched her career. "I just wanted to make some other dreams come true."
Munn adds a strong credit to her resume as Momo Hahn, a Type A career-oriented analyst with a severe outlook on life and a bone-dry delivery in the Sarah Jessica Parker vehicle I Don't Know How She Does It. She spoke with Movieline about her character, battling female stereotypes on and off-screen, being both sexy and smart despite what her critics say (and the infamous backlash to her Daily Show hiring), the frustrations that led to her split from G4, her work on Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike, and more.
I wanted to make a point not to start by asking you how you do it, because I'm sure you've gotten that question a lot already.
[Laughs] Yeah, I have! 'How do you do it all?' It's always like, 'This movie's called I Don't Know How She Does It and we watch Sarah Jessica doing that, but you with the movies and the show, how do you do it all?!' I'm like, well, I don't have children right now. So how are you going to start it off instead?
By asking you how you found you related to the women in this film. I'm 30, I don't have kids, and so I don't necessarily relate to Sarah Jessica's character as much as I do to your character, Momo. So when you first read the script, who did you find yourself relating to most?
You know, the only similarity I find between my character and myself is that we're both hardworking. I actually relate more to Sarah Jessica's world -- not that I'm in it, but it's something that I would want one day, to be able to have children and a family and also have my work and my career. So my biggest thing was, Momo has a filter, she just chooses not to use it. She has a very structured, very specific outlook on life. That's why I wanted to cut my hair, too. I wanted there to be nothing that was going to get in her way, even something as trivial as her hair. But she has one goal in life. I think what I loved about the role so much was that I could see how she is perceived, and you want to break down the character in a way that is harder to break down. She's robotic, and phobic of children. 'Oh, you want kids one day?' I get asked that a lot. And it's more of a rhetorical question. 'Do you want kids one day? Do you realize that your eggs are literally falling out of you, one by one?' And I'm like, okay, I've picked up on your tone. Thank you for that.
Momo starts out as a career woman who doesn't see the appeal in motherhood but then reveals a surprising maternal instinct. In that, she's probably the most interesting character in the film.
What I love about this is that some people want to put these people in a box; Momo has a very specific view in life. My mother and my aunt, they all went to university and worked really hard and got their degrees and they got married and had children and thought they had to make a choice, one or the other. And our generation, I think that's what we see when we look at our parents. We're not going to let family and all that stuff get in the way of our dreams. My mom growing up said to me all the time, one, 'Don't get pregnant.' And 'don't do drugs.' Then the last one was, 'Never just marry a man and become his wife. Make a name for yourself.' That's something that she said to me all the time, and it stuck with me. But here's the thing; my whole life is work right now. And like you're saying, you don't have children and you're career-oriented, but it doesn't mean that you don't want to have kids. Also, if you don't have kids it doesn't mean that you picked your career over it. Some people don't want to have kids. So what I wanted to do with Momo was show someone from that point of view, but also she's an extreme version of a lot of people that I've seen or I've heard about.
How do you see the women in this film?
There are two people: The women who stay at home, or the women who work and have a plan in life and that's it. But the most important thing for me was to show that if you're a real human being you're not just a caricature. A real human being has to be more than just that. The main storyline is, how can a woman be a great mother and a great wife and great at her job at the same time; how do you juggle that? But the B storyline to me is showing that women in different forms can be really horrible to each other, like Busy Phillips' character, or we can be really supportive of each other if we understand each others' world like Christina Hendricks, but what I play is that we can be women with two completely different outlooks on life and different agendas, yet be supportive and be friends and love each other and need each other. My choices with Momo, it was always coming from a place of, 'I'm rooting for you. I'm on your team.' Sometimes people, and even women, perpetuate this stereotype themselves, not realizing it, wanting to hold each other down.
Did that come up during scenes?
Sometimes we would be doing a scene and as with any great project, everyone's really collaborative and talking about it. But one time there was a note for me to be more catty, or to say something that I just said, 'It doesn't matter what my delivery is on this, it doesn't sound supportive. I won't do it.' The women that I know in my life, the reality, is that we are really supportive. My two best girlfriends, one's an architect and one's a nurse. We couldn't be more different.
Many chick flicks and romantic comedies these days do that as well, it seems. Like Something Borrowed, which actually is about two female friends competing for the same man.
It's a plane movie -- you watch it on the plane. [Laughs] But that movie is like a lot of movies, not to just single that one out, where one woman is so oblivious to her best friend's feelings about somebody else, and on the same token where one woman is so closed off to her best friend about her feelings about somebody else. Then later on when you can go and sleep with your best friend's fiancé... I'm literally like, push her off a bridge! To me, that is real in some women's worlds. Those are the women who want to, I think, hold back other women who actually want to be more progressive. I think it's dangerous, and people make the joke, 'Women dress for other women.' I'm like, no I don't! Because one, it's not 1995, because that joke's old. And two, I don't want that girl to want to have sex with me. I want that guy to want to have sex with me, and let's just call it like it is. And sometimes, I just want to feel good for me. I don't walk through life dressing up for other women, and I never have. It's just obnoxious. And we have to be accountable for what we put out there, and I know how lucky we are. In the beginning when you start to do different jobs you're just thankful to get any kind of work and do it, and people are guiding you, but you have to have a sense of self.
How does that translate into your career and how it's evolved in the last few years? From G4 to now, at what point did you try to start transitioning into acting?
From the very beginning. I moved down here in 2003 and was going out for every commercial audition, doing everything I could. I got a small Nickelodeon show right before I went to G4, and they offered me a job and I actually turned it down three or four times. I thought it was a great opportunity but they were like, 'It's 9 to 5, Monday through Friday' -- oh no, I have to be able to continue auditioning and all that crap. They were like, what's good for you is good for us, we want you here and we'll work it out. I said, great! And for the first six months I dedicated everything, and after that I started auditioning for stuff. I was actually offered a TV pilot but at this point the ratings for Attack of the Show had gone up a lot. They were like, 'Oh no, you can't do it.' I was like, 'What? You promised me I could!' 'Well, we just can't really afford to have you off our show right now...' And I wasn't going to be off, I was going to do them both. But I think the fear there was that I wouldn't be able to do both. I said OK, I cried, the next one came around a few weeks later and they said, 'The next one that comes around, we'll let you do.' They wouldn't let me do it. Alright -- hold on. You guys promised me this! They said, 'Well, in good faith...'
Good faith! Good faith, as in their faith. I'm big on loyalty and sticking by my word. So long story short, they worked it out with the lawyers to try and figure it out, but I wanted to be able to live my dream. I wanted to be able to do this, it was a dream of mine, but I also wanted to be able to be creative in other ways. And that's when I said, I really want to start doing comedic skits. Doing things like comedic acting pieces, and I could put on different characters and make sure the audience was always seeing me in a different character with a different name and being different people, so that when the transition did happen, if I was lucky enough for it to happen, they wouldn't be like, 'That's Olivia!' The first one we did was 'It's hard to be a female superhero' with Wonder Woman... 'There's no pockets for your mirrors and your brush!' 'The invisible jet is really hard to find!' I think that became the calling card for the network, and for myself.
When you were first taking meetings for film work and talking with execs and casting agents around town, did people recognize you by the crazy stuff you did on camera for Attack of the Show?
Back then, I remember going into a big meeting with a big exec at CBS and they were like, 'Hey, I saw you deep throat some hot dogs that were hanging on a string.' And I was like, 'Oh. Yeah. That was nine months ago, but yeah, I did that.' And that's when I realized that one clip will live forever on the internet with no context. [Laughs] It's OK. It was what it was. But I jumped into massive pie, and Donna Gigliotti, the head of the Weinstein Co., which did this movie, she said, 'I watched you jump in that pie, and if you can make jumping into a pie in a French maid costume funny, as a woman, I like you.' You know how people go on and do something and they want to be somewhere else? I didn't want to be somewhere else. I wanted to be at G4, doing what I was doing, and also be able to pursue acting and other creative outlets. I just wanted to make some other dreams come true. But I treated the audience like they were my friends, and I pushed the limit with my jokes, but I trusted the audience to be smart enough to know that I was joking and to pick up on what I was saying and what my intention was in telling that kind of joke in that particular moment. So whenever I did those things, it was with 100 percent dedication where the intention was to get a laugh. The only thing I look for when I'm doing something is, if I can make the camera guy laugh, or make the stage manager or the people who have been there all day long and they've heard it all and they're super tired -- if I can make that person laugh during a scene, that's when I know I'm doing a good job.
How did you come to join The Daily Show?
I never auditioned for The Daily Show. I was on an NBC show at the time, but Jon [Stewart] had just seen something of mine from G4 on TV and thought I had a sense of humor and delivery and whatever it was he thought would fit in with The Daily Show. I brought my same enthusiasm and dedication and follow-through that I did on G4 and then to other projects. But it's not a traditional package, which is why I think it was hard for people in the beginning.
What was your reaction to the backlash when you were hired?
They said, 'Oh, she's the Maxim cover girl,' which I get. But I'm just like, I'm sorry -- you can put yourself in a box, I just refuse to let you put me in one, too. My thing is, forget what my background is. They're trying to reduce it to, 'You can't be on the cover of Maxim and you can't be pretty and also be smart and funny. You're only getting by on your looks.' Tina Fey, who had her book come out recently and they did a 30 Rock episode about my hiring at The Daily Show, and she defends me on her book tour and says if I was overweight and had a mustache on the cover of Maxim, everybody [would be] saying, you go girl! But when I do it... I am who I am and I'm embracing everything that I am, and I'm not going to put on a turtleneck and hide away if I want to be smart and funny. You can be all of those things.
The criticisms seemed to die down shortly thereafter...
When that happened, [the critics] had pretty much no comment after The Daily Show put out a statement and rallied together behind Jon and behind me. My real question is, are you telling me that you're smart, funny, and ugly? Because clearly you can't be pretty, right? I'm guessing that whoever's criticizing me, you're saying that you're smart and funny but you can't be all of them. And then they're like, 'Well, you're using that.' No, I'm just being who I am and I'm actually comfortable with my sexuality, and if you put on a push-up bra or put on lip gloss, do not criticize me at all. Because who are you wearing those things for? Unless you're at home by yourself with your significant other. Who are you out in the world doing that for, who are you trying to impress? So people can not like me, that's fine. People can not think I'm funny, that's fine. But when you're trying to make a statement for women in general -- I'm like, you know what? You don't speak for a lot of women I know, and you don't speak for me. It's just you and your narrow minded friends that can all have this opinion. At least preface it with that. Like, 'Hi -- me and my friends are really narrow-minded and we don't like Olivia.' Great. But don't speak on behalf of all women.
I just try to work as hard as I can work, come to set, be prepared, keep my head down, and say 'thank you' as much as possible. And I'm really lucky that people like Scott Rudin, Aaron Sorkin, Jon Stewart, Steven Soderbergh -- that they are the ones who are casting these projects and making the things that I'm in. I'm thankful they believe that women can be funny and also pretty.
Speaking of that, how did you come to be cast in Magic Mike? It seems to be much less comedic a project than the other films you've done.
Yeah, it is. I had heard about it before but I was in the middle of shooting Daily Show stuff and also working on this book. I was in New York at the time and didn't really have a lot of time, but I had heard about it. I know that they were really specific in who they wanted and other people had campaigned for it or wanted it, but it's Soderbergh's vision and he has a very specific thing... I'm super excited to be a part of this movie, however I didn't want to go in if I wasn't mentally in the right place to even have a meeting, because I was so tired. But I got a call, and my time was getting short, their time was getting short, and they brought me in. I didn't have time to do a meeting, other people might have met with Steven but he didn't ask anyone to come in and actually read the part for him. I got the script the night before and went in the next day and auditioned. I earned it like any other actress going in for a part. I was just lucky that Soderbergh and the producers thought of me for this, and that they were very specific in who they wanted to come in and read. I knew that it was mine to lose, but I never knew until that moment. Thankfully, whatever it was I did was what they wanted.
How would you describe your character and how she interacts with the rest of the cast?
I don't know how much I'm allowed to say, since it's Soderbergh, but what I will say is it's a movie about Chippendale dancers and it's based on Channing Tatum's actual life experience with the Chippendale dancers. It's a movie about strippers, and the best part is all the strippers are played by the guys. My character is a grad student and I'm a love interest to Channing Tatum-slash-late night adult friend.
Ah, an enviable position.
[Laughs] I hate it. I have to make out with a really good looking, charming, sweet man. I'm actually good friends with his wife Jenna [Dewan], and she's a doll. They're such a comfortable, great couple that you'd be like, 'Is it weird because it's your friend's husband?' But they're so solid, and there's such a respect that they have for the work we're doing and the art of it -- we're all like, let's make a kick ass movie that people are going to go in and spend their money and go into the theater for how many hours and have a great experience.
Have you had to work with anyone now as an actor that you interviewed for Attack of the Show?
I didn't do that many interviews on Attack of the Show because I couldn't really stay focused. [Laughs]
When have those two worlds collided in the most random way?
They collided with Jon Favreau. When I interviewed him for Iron Man, he said it to me, and he said it publicly, that coming onto Attack of the Show really helped launch and begin the excitement for the first Iron Man. You know our show was the geek headquarters at Comic-Con. So I interviewed him then and later on he offered, 'Do you want to do a couple of cameos for Iron Man 2, and we'll make sure one of them stays in the movie?' I got to go there and actually be improv-ing and having fun with Robert Downey, Jr. and Don Cheadle. That was such a really... that's a moment.