Olivia Munn Recalls ‘Traumatic’ On-Set Incident and Alleged ‘Disrespectful’ Settlement She Turned Down

Olivia Munn once turned down an offer of over $1 million to keep quiet about a “traumatic” incident that happened on the set of one of her movies. The actress, 44, opened up about the behind-the-scenes dealings on a film she refused to name during the Tuesday, Feb. 18 episode of Monica Lewinsky’s Reclaiming podcast.

Munn didn’t go into the on-set incident in depth but said what happened was “really not okay” and that there were “a lot of other little” red flags she noticed during production. “It was so traumatic that I had to file complaints with the studio,” she shared on the podcast. “But it got to this place where I was offered a lot of money. A lot of money — seven figures to accept I guess their apology and them taking acknowledgement of it. But it came along with an NDA.”

Munn continued, “And not that I would ever have talked about it, truly, because I just wanted to move past it all. That’s why I don’t want to talk about the specific things that happened in that situation but 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 that she was wary of signing an NDA at the start of the #MeToo movement. “This was when people were targeting anyone who signed an NDA saying, ‘Oh, you only did it for the money,’ so I was afraid that my voice and speaking up would reverse any kind of validity to my voice,” she explained, “and I was concerned that the studio, in an effort to diminish my voice, would leak out that [she] had signed an NDA for money.”

So while Munn did agree to take a meeting with lawyers, she ultimately turned down the offer. “I turned to my lawyer and I said, ‘I’m not taking it,’” she 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!’”

“That comes into the feistiness of not thinking things through and being so upset and frustrated that this would be offered to me that I did not think about negotiating,” she continued. “I did not think about anything besides how disrespectful that was.”

And while the studio’s attorneys thought she was “crazy” not to take their deal, Munn remains proud of her decision to this day. “I said to him, ‘I know this is a lot of money to you but it is not a lot of money to me to lose my voice,’” she remembered. “And we walked out of there and I remember feeling so proud when I walked out — so proud of myself.”