Olivia Munn’s plan B: neurosurgeon
Early in her career, as the host of the G4 technology series “Attack of the Show!,” Olivia Munn was geekdom’s dream girl: brainy, beautiful and snappy of finger and retort.
Her latest movie, “Office Christmas Party,” opening Friday, taps into that skill set and amps it up. As Tracey, the resident brainiac of a struggling software firm, Munn is not only a potential romantic partner for the chief technical officer (Jason Bateman), but she’s also the steely mind steadying the madness.
“I love finding roles where the woman is smart, and being a love interest does not define who she is,” said Munn, who was born in Oklahoma City, raised in Tokyo and divides her time between Los Angeles and Green Bay, Wisc., with her boyfriend, Aaron Rodgers, who is the Packers’ starting quarterback. “And I think the only way to change a stereotype in media is to write roles where women are the tech experts and the doctors and the scientists.”
In a phone interview, the wry Munn, 36, who studied to be a journalist before playing one on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and HBO’s “The Newsroom,” talked about what she’d really be if she weren’t an actress.
Q: So was filming “Office Christmas Party” as much fun as it looks?
A: Jason and I did hip-hop rehearsals while wearing these giant sumo-snowman suits. We learned this choreography to do together and then a bunch of freestyle moves. It was a lot harder to maneuver in those outfits than it looks like, but once I got the hang of it, they couldn’t get me to stop dancing! It was so much fun.
Q: Your Instagram bio reads, “If I wasn’t an actress I’d probably be a neurosurgeon
… or something else that makes me sound smart.” Aren’t actresses smart?
A: It’s because whenever you ask an actor or actress in interviews, “OK, if you weren’t an actor or actress, what would you be?” they always say something like, “I’d probably become an astronaut.” I say neurosurgeon because I think people would say, “Wow, she must be really smart because she was on her way to becoming a neurosurgeon, but she took a detour to become an actor.” In reality, I would probably be a facialist. I’m not saying that my facialist is not super smart — she is — but she is not smarter than my friend who is an astronaut.
Q: Do you really have a friend who’s an astronaut?
A: Yes, Mark Kelly. He and (former Rep.) Gabby (Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt in January 2011) are two of my closest friends. We met at an event after “The Newsroom” had done an episode about Gabby and the shooting, and Mark was so sweet and told me how impactful that was for their family. Q: You majored in journalism at the University of Oklahoma. When did you decide to veer into acting? A: As far back as I can remember, I wanted to be an actress. My mother is Chinese, but she was born and raised in Vietnam. My grandmother and her nine children spent all their money to come to the U.S. after the war ended. And then all nine children got multiple degrees. So when I told my mom I wanted to become an actress, it was like: “It’s ridiculous. I’m not paying for you to go to college to go become an actor and then struggle.” So I asked her, “What do you think if I did journalism?” Because the thing I love about acting is being a storyteller. And she was A-OK with that.