Olivia Munn
Olivia Munn is reflecting on a tough chapter in her profession—one which got here with a hefty price ticket to remain silent.
What adopted was a proposal she didn’t see coming: a seven-figure settlement in change for signing a non-disclosure settlement.
“I had to file complaints with the studio, and there’s a lot of other little things that go along with it, but it got to this place where I was offered a lot of money,” Munn, 44, defined.
“Seven figures to accept, I guess, their apology and them taking acknowledgment of it. But it came along with an NDA.”
Regardless of the staggering sum, Munn knew instantly that she wasn’t .
The actress emphasised that she by no means supposed to make the state of affairs public—she merely needed to go away it behind. However signing an NDA, she feared, may finally work in opposition to her.
“This was like the reckoning, the Harvey Weinstein reckoning that began it all,” Munn mentioned, referencing the 2017 resurgence of the Me Too motion. On the time, many have been fast to criticize those that signed NDAs, accusing them of staying silent for monetary achieve.
“I was afraid that my voice and speaking up would just reverse any kind of validity to my voice,” she admitted. She additionally suspected the studio would possibly use the NDA in opposition to her, leaking its existence to “diminish” her actions.
Although she briefly met with attorneys to debate the settlement, Munn wasted no time in rejecting the provide outright.
“That comes into the feistiness of not thinking things through and being so upset and frustrated that this would be the offer to me,” she instructed Lewinsky. “I did not think about negotiating. I did not think about anything besides how disrespectful that was.”
One explicit second within the dialog stood out to her—a lawyer emphasizing the sum of money concerned, as if she ought to rethink. Munn’s response?
“I know this is a lot of money to you, but it is not a lot of money to me to raise my voice.”
Strolling out of that assembly, she remembers feeling one factor, proud.
On the time of the Me Too motion, Munn was engaged on initiatives like 2018’s The Predator. Whereas she hasn’t named the movie in query, her story serves as a strong reminder of the choices ladies in Hollywood have needed to make within the battle to be heard.