Olivia Munn Describes ‘Surreal’ Out-of-Body Moment of Breast Cancer Diagnosis: ‘I’d Seen This in Movies’

At first, Olivia Munn’s breast cancer diagnosis didn’t feel real.

In fact, in a weird way, it felt familiar. “I’d seen this in movies,” Munn told Hoda Kotb on the Joy 101 podcast on June 10. “I was like, oh, I’ve seen this when someone sits down and they go, ‘It’s cancer.’ You watch it from a third-person perspective.”

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Then, all of a sudden, Munn said she realized this was happening to her, not a character on screen. “It was very surreal,” she said. “As it’s happening, it feels like I’m in a movie. But the same time, my brain is like, ‘Be here, right now.”

Munn was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2023, at age 42, after her OB-GYN calculated her Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Score and recommended she have additional screening. The actress had just welcomed her first child, Malcolm, in 2021, and had been planning her second with now-husband John Mulaney when she got the diagnosis.

“It’s a huge marker,” Munn said, reflecting on that moment. “When somebody goes back and tells the story of your life, you think it’s going to be one way, and all of a sudden, there’s a fork in the road.”

After she got through the initial out-of-body moment, Munn remembers getting “really focused,” a mindset she would stay in throughout treatment. She learned she had Luminal B cancer, and aggressive and fast-moving breast cancer, which they later found to be in both breasts.

From there, Munn says, “it was off to the races.” She had a double mastectomy just 30 days later.

Through the whole ordeal, she says, she only cried twice: right before the double mastectomy, and a week after, when she saw herself with tissue expanders — empty breast implants not yet filled with liquid or air. (“I didn’t recognize myself,” she explained previously on the SheMD podcast.)

Munn also admits she was afraid of freezing her eggs amidst her diagnosis, as the hormones taken during the process can further stimulate some types of cancer. (Per Breastcancer.org, fertility doctors who specialize in working with cancer patients can customize the medication regimen to protect the body from high estrogen levels, while still stimulating the ovaries to produce eggs.)

For Munn, though, it was about an acceptance of fear and a decision to not let it run her life. “I realized then that I think I’ll be afraid for the rest of my life,” she explained. With cancer, “we always have to look over our shoulder” in case of a recurrence. “I had decided that I can’t choose where the fear wants to be and wants to sit… You might be sitting in the passenger side, you might be sitting in the back, but it’s going to be in the car of my life.”

Munn was set on having a girl, no matter how many rounds it took — and, as her doctor told her, “the numbers aren’t on our side.” But then “the dream” happened: two healthy embryos developed after her first egg retrieval, and both were baby girls. “My daughter Méi Méi’ is one of those two,” Munn said. She and Mulaney welcomed Mèi June in September 2024 via surrogate.

It was quite a journey, from that surreal moment of diagnosis to a double mastectomy to today, with Munn telling Kotb about an idyllic home life with her husband and two kids. And, Munn says, she found a new calling along the way: advocating for women to calculate their Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Score, the test that resulted in her early diagnosis and successful treatment.

“I had no idea when I talked about it, that it would be so far- reaching and help so many people, and but that was my goal,” Munn said. “That’s what I wanted… [I thought] if I do it right, maybe I could really make a difference.”

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