Olivia Munn has shared a striking behind-the-scenes story about a male co-star who brought filming to a halt because his character was about to be saved by hers, and refused to let it happen.
Speaking on The Drew Barrymore Show, the actress described a scene set in a bunker in which she and her co-star were fighting side by side, each covering their own section.
The script called for Munn’s character, either a CIA agent or a police officer, to shoot a man who was about to fire at her co-star from behind.
Simple enough on paper. Not so in practice.
“We’re about to shoot and, somehow, I guess he didn’t read the script, and in that moment, he realized, ‘Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. She can’t save me. No, no. She can’t save me,'” she recalled.
What followed was a 45-minute standoff.
Her co-star became “combative with the director,” making no effort to keep his objections quiet. “He had no insecurity about being obnoxious and everyone hearing this and being like, ‘She can’t save me! We’re not doing this.'”
Munn eventually found a way to move things forward herself.
“I said, ‘OK, how about instead of my character saving you, it’s just that we switch because it’s time for us to switch and so this is my guy to get.'”
That was enough. “And he was like, ‘OK.'”
It is not the first time Munn has spoken publicly about poor treatment from male colleagues on set.
On Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, she described a director from her time on HBO’s The Newsroom who she says tried to damage her chances of landing a film role by telling the studio she had been “really combative” and frequently late.
“I lived seven minutes from there. I was never late,” she said.
She named him internally to her representatives and still got the role, but the incident stayed with her.
“He just was trying to bash me. And I told my reps, ‘Please tell the directors this.’ I will always remember that just because of our conflicts of how we approached a role, he wanted to ruin my chances of getting anything else.”
