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Munn recalls taking complaints to the studio, before sharing why she turned down the “disrespectful” offer herself in person.
Olivia Munn is opening up about the time she was offered a good deal of money to keep quiet about what she called a “traumatic” experience on set.
While appearing on Monica Lewinsky’s podcast, Reclaiming, Munn revealed why the unnamed movie set was toxic, before claiming the settlement deal came with an NDA attached.
“There were other things that happened on this movie set personally to me that was really not OK, and it was so traumatic that I had to file complaints with the studio,” the 44-year-old actress began, claiming she was offered hush money.
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“[It was] a lot of money — seven figures to accept, I guess, their apology and them taking acknowledgement of it,” Munn claimed, adding that she never planned to talk about what happened publicly and “just wanted to move past it all.”
Despite the substantial amount thrown at her and her reluctance to speak out anyway, Munn was still determined not to sign the agreement.
“I said, ‘I’m not signing an NDA,’ and they said, ‘You have to,’ and I just felt that it was so wrong,” Munn said.
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She recalled it happening during the “Me Too” movement’s peak — which gained momentum in 2017 — when disgraced former film producer Harvey Weinstein’s antics were being revealed. She called that time “the reckoning,” where “people were targeting anyone who signed an NDA, saying, ‘Oh, you only did it for the money.'”
She opened up about how she didn’t have enough trust in the studio to not “leak out that I had signed an NDA for money” which she felt would, in turn, “diminish” her voice.
Ultimately, she met with the studio’s legal team — with her own team of lawyers — and decided to turn down the offer.
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“I turned to my lawyer and I said, ‘I’m not taking it,'” Munn recalled. “I told my lawyer, ‘I’m just not gonna do it. I want to say no now.’ And he was like, ‘Let’s think about it.’ And I said, ‘I want to say no now!'”
She explained to Lewinsky that she despite NDAs becoming illegal shortly after her experience, she would still turn down the money.
“Look, was it the right thing to do and do the people in my life think that I did the right thing and are proud of me for that? Yes,” she shared.
However, she seemingly regrets not negotiating with the legal team, adding that she has a “feistiness of not thinking things through” and was “so upset and frustrated that this would be the offer to me.”
During the meeting, she felt someone on the studio’s legal team spoke in a “disrespectful” way about how she was being offered “a lot of money.” She claimed she told them, “I know this is a lot of money to you, but it is not a lot of money to me to raise my voice.”
At the end of the day, the actress walked out of the meeting feeling “so proud.”
