All Access with Linsey Davis: Olivia Munn

[0:04] Hi everyone, welcome to All Access. I'm Lindsay Davis and we are here with actress Olivia Munn. [0:10] Thank you so much for joining us for the conversation. Really appreciate it. [0:14] I'm so happy that you asked me to be a part of this. [0:16] So you recently said life happens on a Tuesday. Give us a sense of what you mean by that. [0:24] My grandmother who I was very close with when I was in college passed away just in like a random [0:33] day in the middle of the week and I just stayed with me for so long thinking about how how that [0:42] was the most important day of my life to date. You know I was 20 21 and I just kept thinking about like [0:53] we make these big plans for New Year's and birthdays and Christmas and I can't I can maybe remember [1:01] one or two of them but that day I remember so clear and that's when I I realized that [1:10] life happens on a Tuesday like some of the biggest moments in your life just happen and it was [1:16] something that really came flooding back to me when I was diagnosed with breast cancer because [1:22] it was it was on a random Monday like it was a sunny day it wasn't ominous like it's seen in the movies [1:28] you know the scary days where it's thunder and lightning it was really a beautiful day in LA [1:33] and I I had I thought I was on my way home after a long day of running errands thought nothing of it [1:39] and then that day changed my life and it's a day I'll never forget and so telling myself that life [1:47] happens on a Tuesday keeps me present and keeps me appreciative of how lucky we are because anything [1:56] can change in an instant and that's what happened with me and you mentioned that day so it was April [2:01] 2023 you're 42 years old your son is two years old at the time and I know you've told this story [2:08] countless times but for those viewers who are not familiar tell us about how that all came to be [2:14] because you had no symptoms and you had taken all the tests as you're supposed to and you were in the [2:20] clear so you thought yeah I did everything that we as women are told to do mammogram ultrasound genetic [2:27] testing everything came back clear but my doctor Dr. Thais Ali Bhadi did something called the lifetime [2:33] risk assessment test it's a free online test it takes minutes to take and it's been around for a very [2:38] long time but a lot of doctors don't ask their patients about it and what their score is and anything [2:46] above 20 percent is considered high risk and I came back at 37.3 percent she told me I had to get an MRI [2:52] which I thought felt a little extreme since I had already been clear on everything else and she said [2:59] it's important that I go and that day I did the MRI not that day like the day I did the MRI I got a call [3:07] from the radiologist and he said I found something in your right breast and I think you should get an [3:13] ultrasound so then I go get an ultrasound and the doctor's taking a while and you know that's never [3:20] a good sign and I'm like is it is it cancer what are you seeing and she goes well I see the one from [3:23] the MRI but now I'm finding two more and then she explained to me that women's breasts are thought of [3:30] in quadrants like you put a cross right through it and it's not abnormal to have two in one quadrant [3:37] which would be multifocal but now she's seeing them in multi-quadrants so she said you need to get a [3:43] biopsy and I went to get the biopsy and then it came back as luminal B which is a hormonal cancer [3:50] and it's a fast growing very aggressive cancer and my doctor said I'm gonna guarantee it's on the left [3:59] breast too and then other doctors said like that's crazy like it's bilateral is extreme and I said but [4:04] isn't multi-quadrant very unusual and they said well yeah let's go back to your MRI and sure enough they [4:09] found breast cancer on my left breast as well so then I was diagnosed with multifocal multi-quadrant [4:15] bilateral breast cancer and at that stage it was important that I do a double mastectomy if I wanted [4:23] to mitigate my risk of it coming back and so then I was off to the races and to date I've had five [4:30] surgeries I want to go back to that lifetime risk assessment test the National Cancer Society as you [4:37] know has credited you with an uptick of 4 000 increase in women getting that test what made you [4:46] decide to speak so publicly about your own journey and in doing so help so many others when I was [4:55] diagnosed I told my husband we don't tell anyone we're not telling our friends we're not telling our [5:00] family and it's not that I was ashamed it's because I couldn't deal with other people's worry [5:05] you know I couldn't deal with my mom calling me and and I also didn't want to hear everybody else's [5:13] opinions about it I really didn't want to hear people say in a comforting way I call it bright [5:19] sighting the situation where they say you know you're gonna be fine you're gonna you know what [5:22] you're gonna be fine and that's what a lot of people did when we eventually told our friends and [5:26] family I didn't want to hear that because it diminishes the fear and I'm like you're not you're not in [5:33] my situation so you really don't know what's going to happen but um I saw my husband struggling with it [5:41] and I realized that he needs some comfort too and he needs to have people that he can talk to so I said [5:46] let's tell our friends and family but at that point I still wasn't going to talk about it publicly and [5:52] then one day I was going through my phone and I was looking at pictures of my son and I and there was [5:57] this one of us in the front yard playing and I had just had my mammogram and it was clear and I went [6:04] oh my gosh I had breast cancer and I didn't know it and then I started thinking about all of the other [6:08] women who were walking around thinking that they are clear and have no breast cancer but have breast [6:14] cancer just like me and at that moment I realized that I needed to talk about it because what I was [6:20] offering from my experience was something that was free that everyone could take it's doesn't take much [6:27] of your time it's five minutes and where a lot of other um people are suggesting these really [6:32] expensive MRIs and um and things that that a lot of people can't afford it was like if you can just [6:40] take this test it could possibly save your life and it feels like you are willing to share the good bad [6:48] and ugly we see people on instagram who only kind of show the glossy glamorous life um but even when you [6:54] did uh the skims ad for example after your double mastectomy and then you show your scars yeah what [7:01] went into that when I was first diagnosed one of the very first things I did was research online public [7:10] people who had gone through breast cancer and I found that a lot of people talked about the difficult [7:17] journey which is very much a big part of it but I wasn't seeing a lot of people talking about getting [7:24] to a good place in their life they talked about the long lasting effects which I'm going through right [7:30] now and I understand and I completely agree with them that it's very difficult but I really needed to [7:36] find hope I really needed to know that I was going to be okay and that my life was going to be good if [7:42] not better after this and then I realized that there wasn't a lot of that when I was doing the skims campaign [7:49] they'd asked me to do it for breast cancer awareness month and it was just going to be you know a beautiful [7:55] skims campaign and I was in makeup and I was trying to cover up my scars um and then I was looking in [8:05] the mirror as they were doing it and I just thought about how I would love if somebody showed them in a [8:12] beautiful way and I thought well maybe maybe I can be that for myself and if I if it helps me maybe it's [8:19] going to help other women who who are going through this and to show people that these are not scars that [8:25] um that were developed from cancer taking away something from your life these are scars that [8:32] prove how hard we fought and so to me it's it's I look at them as if I you know it's if you got a [8:39] tattoo that that said like you know I was here and I made it you're right it's a survivor yeah it's a [8:46] it's a it's emblematic I guess of of a survivor and there are times still where I'll I mean I was [8:53] looking at them the other day and I was trying on a dress for the premiere of the show and [8:58] I was like it just instantly I was like oh is it and then I think immediately of the women who've [9:03] come up to me because of that and I think oh and I remind myself again that they that they are beautiful [9:09] coming up money talks about being on the other side of cancer and the latest season of her apple tv [9:14] show your friends and neighbors you've talked before about how life is so different obviously [9:31] as it would be for many before cancer and after cancer but in a way that you had to be more present [9:37] and let go of anger anxiety jealousy regret how did cancer change that in such a meaningful way that [9:46] then on the other side you didn't pick those emotions back up again it's kind of strange to say [9:51] but I've you know I've seen it in movies you know that moment where there you know you sit down and [9:55] the doctor says it's cancer and then you kind of go through all the motions but I just couldn't believe [10:01] that this was being said to me and something happened that I didn't realize until like maybe around my [10:08] second or third surgery that I I had in that moment instinctively just dropped all of those emotions [10:17] and all of the that inner dialogue because there's no way that I could have climbed an iceberg I [10:24] couldn't have climbed Everest with all of this extra weight on me and when I got to this place I realized [10:31] oh wait I haven't really been having those thoughts and I haven't been having the anxiety of like a past [10:36] memory coming forward and being like oh I can't believe I did that or why didn't I take that job and [10:41] why did I react this way and then I just actually actually saw it on the ground I was like there it [10:50] all is like just laying out there and I realized at that moment that I I won't let myself pick it back [10:56] up that it was such a gift for me to go through the rest of my life not thinking like that that inner [11:02] voice that's just constantly there and was a lot of times very contradictory to how I presented myself [11:11] and then I think the biggest gift that it has given me is that I always thought that having the armor [11:18] made me strong I thought that fighting back and using my voice and shutting people down was like [11:25] yeah see how this person retreats and when I talk like this and this is really great and that was my [11:31] strength but having no armor on and and not having that personality trait anymore I realized that being [11:39] vulnerable actually makes me stronger in every way how is your mom doing because I understand that she [11:47] took the same test that you did in July found out that that she also has breast cancer yeah [11:53] my mom also had a clear mammogram and I did the lifetime risk assessment test for her and she came [12:00] back with a score higher than 20 percent which is considered high risk and we had her do an [12:06] MRI and a PET scan and she was diagnosed with HER2 breast cancer HER2 is a type of cancer that can [12:14] double in size every six weeks when we found the breast cancer a few weeks later she had her double [12:20] mastectomy and it had already become multifocal which means it's splintered off and so it was [12:24] basically off to the races at that point so we found it just in time she had to do three months of [12:29] weekly chemo a year of immunotherapy she was so brave the the treatment is really difficult and [12:38] you know through my journey you know I went from you know being a cancer patient to being the daughter [12:45] of a cancer patient and now being a caretaker and I have a newfound understanding of how hard it is to [12:52] be the caretaker I would actually say it was more difficult being the caretaker to my mother than my own [12:58] journey I was able to table my fears but the fear I had for my mother it's it doesn't go away and my [13:07] mother said to me like I'll do what you say and then her her being the age that she was a 69 I was [13:17] so worried about her doing chemo and immunotherapy and what that would mean and if her body could [13:24] tolerate it and what the consequences would be and and let's talk about just how significant your mom [13:29] has been in your life because early on so it's punky brewster right that you see as a little girl [13:34] and you decide I want to be an actress and mom says no yeah and then you decide okay I'll be a [13:40] journalist and then you're okay with that she's okay with that and so you actually start out in Tulsa [13:48] as a reporter yeah for your what was it about journalism that you kind of if I can't be an actress [13:53] then I'll be a journalist I love storytelling and and I you know that's what acting is but that's [14:00] also what journalism is my mother's an immigrant and she fled Saigon the day the war ended she made me [14:07] make her a promise she said use your degree for one year I was a journalism major she's like use it [14:14] for one one year and then I will support you going out to California and trying to be an actor and [14:20] so I got the job at the NBC affiliate in Tulsa Oklahoma KJRH and I was at the assignment desk [14:28] and I had to listen to all those scanners and you're supposed to be able to listen to them [14:32] at the assignment desk that's your number one job so like you'll hear like it'll be fire department [14:37] paramedics like all these like scanners I could hear nothing and um and I would hear like a reporter [14:44] in the back you know calling out what they heard and I was like how are they hearing this I'm horrible at [14:49] this job and it was a year to the day that I worked there that I went into the um the the news manager [14:57] and said I'm gonna quit and I got into my car and and drove myself by myself all the way to California [15:05] and so what did mom say because at a certain point you think after you have her blessing what if I don't [15:12] make it and she says then you can come home how significant was that to have that reassurance that you [15:17] can't always come home it meant everything because that was my biggest fear it was the embarrassment [15:23] that like like that other people were looking at me going oh you think you can make it all right [15:29] and I I thought about something it like kind of I my fear came in I thought why am I afraid I thought [15:37] oh you know I bet that you know what's my biggest fear it's going out there and then um coming back and [15:44] people saying like oh we knew you'd come back and this is a moment that I think my sister doesn't [15:48] even remember but she was just getting ready and curling her hair one day and she goes oh you know [15:52] what's so funny mom said to me the other day that you know Olivia keeps asking me to go to California [15:58] be an actor and I just keep telling her next year so if she says anything to you just keep saying next [16:02] year and one day she'll forget and I sat there so quiet and I realized like oh my gosh that's what I've [16:08] been doing I've been putting myself into a scenario so that one day when I reached 40 or 50 and people [16:18] are asking me like what was your dream and I would be able to say I was going to be an actor but my mom [16:24] said no and I was able to have an excuse for why I didn't do it I could blame somebody else and I [16:29] didn't have to blame myself and in that moment I realized like I can't do that I gotta I gotta go for [16:36] it no matter how afraid I am and you what a success it's ended up being so we have to talk about my new [16:43] favorite show your friends and neighbors I I've been binging it the last few days and it's really [16:50] interesting because in general a lot of the characters are not necessarily likable people [16:56] and they're doing going to all lengths in order to maintain some social status even going as far as [17:03] stealing and there's murder and yet you're kind of rooting for them at the same time unless it's just [17:11] me I think that um I think that anytime that you see people who are really struggling um and are at [17:21] the bottom there's I think it's a human nature to to root for people and to want people to to do well [17:29] but at the same time I think that what drew a lot of people to the show was that we're watching the [17:34] one percent and it's something very captivating to watch people who have it all lose it all and there's [17:42] something satisfying that in that as well especially people who aren't righteous and who um aren't uh [17:49] thinking about other people oftentimes so um I think there's something really exciting about watching [17:56] their demise so give us a sense sam because we're just about to start now season two we leave sam [18:04] she's gotten in some trouble she's kind of come this social pariah can you give us a hint of of what we [18:12] can expect from sam coming up in season two yeah the beginning of season two you find sam at the bottom [18:19] the very bottom of her life she has lost all of her money she is out of jail she uh has lost her her [18:29] social standing nobody wants to be her friend and so she's got to figure out how to pick up the pieces [18:35] of her life and be able to get a job that sustains this kind of life and to be in this community which [18:43] is the one percent of of wealthy people in our country so um she's desperately trying to make it [18:52] back to the top and it's a it's a it's a struggle for her i i just want to now fast forward to where [18:57] you are today um because you said you're still having linger effect lingering effects you've had [19:03] multiple surgeries i have to imagine you're in pent menopause at this time now and so how are you [19:10] feeling because you went through a lot in a short amount of time and by the way had two kids in [19:17] between and cancer and the double mastectomy and postpartum anxiety postpartum anxiety which you [19:23] talked about i've also experienced that we had the anxiety i did i had never heard of postpartum [19:30] anxiety only heard of depression so i really kept it to myself initially thinking this is just me [19:36] saying really unusual i don't want to freak out my husband and mother and family you know by by [19:42] sharing it and so when you shared your story so publicly it resonated with me as well and and so [19:48] i thank you i've i've spoken about my experience before and i know that you didn't do it for all of [19:55] these reasons and becoming ultimately one of time magazine's most influential people and then 2025 [20:01] um time women of the year what advice would you say to anyone who is perhaps they've just gotten that [20:10] cancer diagnosis perhaps they are going struggling um with ivf you you've experienced so much and i [20:18] feel like there's so much wisdom that you could share is there one piece of advice that has kept you [20:25] saying or or holding on through this time my oncologist was really pressing to me that i have to stay [20:36] optimistic she's like you have to have hope even when things seem really scary even when there is [20:43] incredible side effects that are debilitating and you're in bed all day you just have to have hope [20:48] that it will get better so having hope is the most important thing about all of this you know it drives [20:55] us it creates um just a feeling of calm and it keeps the stress hormones away and they you know in [21:03] a really like chemical medical way she was talking to me about hope and that really was impactful for [21:10] me because you think hope feels like like a hippy dippy way to talk about life and and how to approach [21:19] things but she was talking to me from a medical standpoint and the research that's been done on hope [21:24] and so i would suggest to anybody going through it to find a way to to find the hope and hold on to [21:31] that and there will be times where you will lose hope and fear comes in and i think it's important to [21:39] know that the fear is always going to be there especially when you have a very aggressive cancer [21:46] like i have and where the doctors are saying we have to stay on top of this with yearly mris like [21:51] in pet scans the fear will be with you but if you can find a way to see the hope and have it always [21:59] within distance of grabbing it and incorporating it back into your life like that will be your best bet [22:06] i thank you so much for this conversation and countless others out there whose whose lives you [22:13] are are changing and saving olivia thank you thank you so much i really appreciate it this has been all [22:19] access i'm lindsay davis thanks for streaming with us