Olivia Munn has spoken out about filming her first sex scenes with Jon Hamm after she underwent a double mastectomy.
The 44-year-old actor revealed she had breast cancer in March 2024, nearly a year after she’d been diagnosed. She underwent five surgeries for her cancer treatment, including a double mastectomy — a procedure that involves the removal of both breasts.
She has since continued acting and is set to star as Hamm’s love interest in the Apple TV+ series, Your Friends & Neighbors.
During an interview with Inside Edition’s Alison Hall, which aired on Wednesday, Munn confessed that it wasn’t easy to film these intimate scenes.
“It was tough,” she said. “But I really wanted to do it for the character and the show.”
Hall — who also underwent a double mastectomy last year — said she was “cheering” at her screen watching the scenes, telling Munn she “looked beautiful.”
When asked if she was “proud” of herself, Munn replied: “Yeah, it was a big hurdle for me.”
Hall, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in October, added: “I really think that so many women who have gone through what we’ve gone through are going to look at that and feel a lot better about themselves.”
Munn previously recalled the nerves she had when filming the sex scenes in an interview with The Los Angeles Times in April.
“I was really nervous about doing any sex scenes because I have a lot of scars,” The Predator star said. “Scars that can be seen in clothing and scars that you wouldn’t know unless I was completely nude.”
She shared that she and Hamm worked with an intimacy coordinator when filming, and she did “a lot of soul searching.”
“I did feel insecure, but each time I did it, I felt better,” she explained, before adding that instead of feeling betrayed by her body, as a result of the cancer diagnosis, she felt “grateful for [her] body because it got [her] through this.”
Munn acknowledged that these intimate scenes felt like a crucial part of her character’s story in Your Friends & Neighbors.
“She wants something so much more from [Mann’s character] than he’s willing to give, and their only connection is through sex,” Munn said. “I really wanted that to be portrayed. I wanted the sex scenes to feel like sex scenes — I wanted them to feel visceral and intense and not hold back at all.”
Munn, who welcomed her second child with husband John Mulaney in September, received widespread praise for proudly displaying her mastectomy scar in a campaign for Kim Kardashian’s Skims brand in October.
“In the middle of this latest @SKIMS campaign shoot, I decided I was done being insecure about my mastectomy scars. Every mark life has left behind on my body is proof of how hard I fought. I hope other women who have been self-conscious about their scars see these photos and feel all the love I’m sending,” she wrote in a post about the campaign on Instagram.
She added, “It’s really meaningful to be part of an initiative that supports research and helps countless individuals impacted by breast cancer.”
