Olivia Munn is opening up about what she endured by a director on the series The Newsroom.
Munn recently shared on the Armchair Expert podcast that while working on the former HBO show, created by Aaron Sorkin, one of the directors tried to “ruin” her career by telling others in the industry she was hard to work with after they disagreed on her character, Sloan Sabbith.
“There was a storyline where my character and Tom Sadoski’s character are dating and falling in love,” the Your Friends & Neighbors actress said. “[The director] kept trying to force me to carry that storyline only on my side. 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.’”
Munn would not name who it was. She later found out the director spoke negatively about their experience working together to other filmmakers that could potentially hire her.
“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.’”
The Hollywood Reporter reached out to HBO for comment.
“I lived seven minutes from there. I was never late. 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,’” she recalled. “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.”
