Olivia Munn is opening up about her experience filming Your Friends & Neighbors sex scenes and why she was particularly hesitant to get intimate with costar Jon Hamm on set.
“I was really nervous about doing any sex scenes because I have a lot of scars,” Munn, 44, told the Los Angeles Times in an interview published on Friday, April 11. “Scars that can be seen in clothing and scars that you wouldn’t know unless I was completely nude.”
Munn was diagnosed with Luminal B breast cancer — an aggressive form of the disease that can grow quickly — in April 2023. In the wake of her diagnosis, Munn experienced months of grueling treatments, including a double mastectomy, a lymph node dissection, reconstructive surgery, a nipple delay procedure, an oophorectomy and a partial hysterectomy.
Despite her reservations, Munn told the outlet that she felt those intimate moments between her and Hamm’s characters were crucial to the series’ story.
“She wants something so much more from him than he’s willing to give and their only connection is through sex,” Munn explained. “I really wanted that to be portrayed. I wanted the sex scenes to feel like sex scenes — I wanted them to feel visceral and intense and not hold back at all.”
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Your Friends & Neighbors, which debuted on Apple TV+ on Friday, follows disgraced, recently fired hedge fund manager Andrew Cooper (Hamm) as he resorts to stealing from his affluent neighbors. Munn plays newly single Samantha “Sam” Levitt, who is secretly sleeping with Andrew behind his ex-wife Mel Cooper’s (Amanda Peet) back. The show also stars Mark Tallman, Donovan Colan, Hoon Lee, Aimee Carrero and Lena Hall.
Just two years ago, Munn told her team not to put her up for any film or television projects.
“I called my agents and my manager and I said, ‘I’m doing being in front of the camera,’” she explained to the outlet. “Don’t put me up for anything.” Ultimately, however, she changed her mind when she was offered the role in part because of the story she would have the opportunity to tell.
Olivia Munn initially chose to keep her breast cancer diagnosis private, but she’s shared plenty of powerful details since coming forward with her journey. “In February of 2023, in an effort to be proactive about my health, I took a genetic test that checks you for 90 different cancer genes,” Munn wrote via Instagram in […]
“There’s a carelessness with which they live their life,” Munn said of the characters on the series. “They feel impervious to the world and it’s so fascinating to watch these people crumble.”
She added that she sees her character as “a survivor – she’s going to do anything to maintain her place and take care of her children.”
Thanks to the help of an intimacy coordinator and “a lot of soul searching,” Munn told the outlet in the same Friday interview that she “made it through” her sex scene performances despite being nervous.
“I did feel insecure, but each time I did it, I felt better,” she explained, adding that instead of feeling betrayed by her body as a result of her cancer diagnosis, she felt “grateful for my body because it got me through this.”
According to Munn, she is now cancer-free, though she acknowledges that while grateful getting a clean bill of health will come with the constant feeling that she “will be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”
