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1 day ago
17 Whoa. This must have been SO bad.
In Tuesday’s episode of the Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky podcast, Olivia Munn revealed she was once offered at least $1 MILLION to stay silent after a “traumatic” experience on a movie set! Jeez! WTF were they trying to cover up??
Olivia didn’t break down what happened or what movie this was connected to, but she expressed:
“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.”
Related: Olivia Goes Topless To Show Off Mastectomy Scars For SKIMS!
She was then “offered a lot of money” to stay silent — and the money came with strings attached. She would’ve had to sign an NDA. She explained:
“[It was] a lot of money — seven figures to accept, I guess, their apology and them taking acknowledgment of it.”
While she wouldn’t have “talked about it” anyway because she “just wanted to move past it all,” the NDA requirement really rubbed her the wrong way:
“I said, ‘I’m not signing an NDA,’ and they said, ‘You have to,’ and I just felt that it was so wrong.”
This took place at the beginning of the #MeToo movement, which gained traction in late 2017 when Harvey Weinstein was starting to get called out. The X-Men: Apocalypse star called it “the reckoning” in Hollywood, recalling that “people were targeting anyone who signed an NDA, saying, ‘Oh, you only did it for the money.’”
Because of this, she was “afraid that my voice and speaking up would reverse any kind of validity to my voice.” Oof. She was even “concerned” that the movie studio would “leak out that I had signed an NDA for money” in “an effort to diminish my voice.” Awful!
The 44-year-old did end up having a meeting with the studio’s legal team about the offer, but she didn’t change her mind. She said:
“I turned to my lawyer and I said, ‘I’m not taking it.’ 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!’”
The Newsroom alum blamed the quick decision on the “feistiness of not thinking things through” at the time of her life, but she stands by her choice, reflecting:
“[I was] so upset and frustrated that this would be offered to me that I did not think about negotiating, I did not think about anything besides how disrespectful that was.”
She also felt like the studio’s legal team’s way of reminding her how much money she was turning down was “disrespectful,” noting they called her “crazy” for not taking the deal. This only made her dig her heels in further, Olivia continued:
“I said to [the attorney], ‘I know this is a lot of money to you, but it is not a lot of money to me to lose my voice.’ And we walked out of there, and I remember feeling so proud when I walked out — so proud of myself.”
Wow!!
While she was glad about her decision, she was a little bummed when “shortly after that California made NDAs illegal, and I was like, oh my gosh!” Aw! Still, she’d always make the same choice she did then. She elaborated:
“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.”
However, she does have one takeaway she learned from this experience, she revealed:
“It’s not that I wouldn’t have ended up with the same decision, it’s that I made that decision based on anger, and that is something I had to learn how to rein in and use for my benefit.”
We bet a lot of people can relate to that! But also, it seems like she had a REALLY valid reason to be angry!
Hear her open up about this (at the 18:30 mark) and lots more (below):
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