Olivia Munn’s time on The Newsroom was not always the easiest.
In a Monday episode of Dax Shepard’s podcast Armchair Expert, the actress opened up about an experience she had with one of the many directors who worked on the hit HBO show and claimed that they wanted to “ruin” her career.
The director who “came in multiple times” apparently had a vision for Munn’s character on The Newsroom, Sloan Sabbith, that she vehemently disagreed with.
“There was a storyline where my character and Tom Sadoski’s character are dating and falling in love. [The director] kept trying to force me to carry that storyline only on my side,” Munn said. “He’s like, ‘Can you look out at him and smile?’ And I’m like, ‘Why she’s busy doing this?’ Or, ‘Can you stop and snuggle up to him or flirt with him?’ Or, ‘Can you give him a kiss?’ And I’m like, ‘This is in the middle of working.’”
After repeatedly butting heads, Munn said the director then later tried to skew her chances at nabbing a movie role by telling studio members involved that she was “really combative” and difficult to work with.
“I was on the one-yard-line for the movie and my manager calls me and says, ‘Hey, you’re gonna get the role. But first, I guess there’s another director who they know and he says that on The Newsroom you were late all the time and really combative,’” Munn said.
“I lived seven minutes from there. I was never late,” she quipped. “I was like, ‘I know who this is.’ He just was trying to bash me. And I told my reps, ‘Please tell the directors this.’ And then I still got the role.”
“But 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,” Munn continued.
The actress then recalled how the experience changed her outlook on her career and reaffirmed her desire to do “great work that I’m happy with.”
“Obviously when you start in this business, there is the hope of making your mark and getting to a certain place. But this kind of dynamic that I had experienced for so long has really changed the way that I think about my career and what I want,” Munn said. “And I truly just wanna do great work that I’m happy with. And I wanna live an easy, happy life. I don’t need to get to the next echelon.”
Munn starred as Sloan Sabbith on all three seasons of The Newsroom from 2012 to 2014. The actress currently stars in AppleTV+’s Your Friends & Neighbors opposite Jon Hamm.
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