MANIC MUNN DAY

Olivia Munn on “nerding out” the day she got her Psylocke costume

Were you familiar with the character before you got the role?

I was a fan of Psylocke for a long time. I’m one of five kids. We all grew up in Japan, on a military base. We’d pool our money together, and my little brother would buy the X- Men comics. So when Simon Kinberg told me they’d given me Psylocke, I started going, “Well, you know she’s a twin. Are you going to talk about her being telekinetic and telepathic?” He’s like, “She was a twin?!”

Did you have clear ideas about how to play her?

At one point I sent a long email, where I was like, “I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page about how to portray Psylocke.” And it was so long it was like I was writing a historical background of a real person! I was like, “Erm, I totally get it if you guys don’t want me in the movie anymore. If I’ve just proven that you’ve literally just cast a fan, and you don’t feel safe anymore cos you think she’s gonna nerd out on everybody every day!”

And did you nerd- out, or did you manage to control yourself?

My nerd- out phase happened trying on the suit. Up until the very end, the whole outfit was black. And I’d asked, “This is going to be purple, right?” But they were short on time cos my character was put in at the very end, right before filming. I felt it was very important the costume looks identical to the comic books. So I called Bryan Singer, and he’s already read my email, so he knew it was coming from a fan. And he said okay. He 100% understood right away.