Olivia Munn Says Director ‘Wanted to Ruin’ Her Career on ‘The Newsroom’ ArticlePure

Olivia Munn loved The Newsroom, but it wasn’t without its challenges.

On the June 30 episode of Armchair Expert, after Dax Shepard brought up how tricky it can be having directors coming in and out for different episodes on TV shows, Munn, 44, revealed a particularly difficult experience she allegedly had with a director who was frequently on set of the HBO series.

In The Newsroom, which aired for three seasons from 2012 to 2014 and also starred Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer, Dev Patel, Sam Waterston and Jane Fonda, Munn played quick and witty financial reporter Sloan Sabbith, and after she “got a lot of love” for her character in season 1, she faced some repercussions in later seasons.

The unnamed director repeatedly tried to undermine Munn’s character by making her focus only on her onscreen romance.

In seasons 2 and 3, Munn was “dating and falling in love” with Thomas Sadoski’s character, Don Keefer, and she claimed the director “kept trying to force me to carry that storyline only on my side.”

She would be in character as Sloan, “in the middle of working and I’ve got this new Bloomberg machine, and I’m so excited, and 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?'”

“There was one time where [Sloan] finds out that [Don’s] done insider trading with some information I got him. And I was like, ‘Are you f—— kidding me? This is insane,'” she recalled.

The director, though, told Munn that her character shouldn’t be “angry” with Don, and instead should find the situation “kind of funny.”

Munn did not back down in the face of the director’s unwelcome criticism.

“I just fought back so much,” she said, which led her and the director to ultimately come to a standstill.

“It got to this place where there was one scene, and I was like, ‘No. I’m not doing [that].’ And he said, ‘Look, it’s my job as a director to see all the different colors of the rainbow and you are looking at only one color, and I don’t think you realize how you’re coming off.’ And I said, ‘How am I coming off?’ And he said, ‘Really forceful and strong.’ And I said, ‘Great. That’s what I wanted.’ And I walked away.”

Even when a producer spoke to her about the tension that was visible on set, she didn’t back down, which she is still “happy” about, looking back.

“I would have been the one. People would have been like, ‘Oh, look at her character. Look how she’s playing it.’ They wouldn’t even care if I even said, ‘It was him.’ So I just stayed to my convictions.”

When she was up for a movie role after The Newsroom, the director allegedly told the team casting the movie she had been “really combative” when he worked with her.

After they had their creative differences on the HBO show, the director allegedly attempted to influence Munn’s future roles, too.

Munn said she was “on the one-yard line” for a movie role when she got a call from her manager, who told her, “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 claim that she was ever late was particularly annoying to her, as she noted she “lived seven minutes” from where they filmed and “was never late.”

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“He just was trying to bash me,” she said of the director.

“And I told my reps, ‘Please tell the directors this.’ And then 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.”