Munn’s Daily grind was turning point
Journalism major spotted by Jon Stewart
After nearly a decade of slowly and steadily rising in Hollywood, Olivia Munn is finding success on big and small screens with the HBO television drama The Newsroom and director Steven Soderbergh’s movie Magic Mike.
If working with two highprofile Oscar winners in Soderbergh and Newsroom creator Aaron Sorkin were not enough, Munn is now taking her first leading role in the independent film comedy The Babymakers, hitting theatres on Friday.
A former host of TV network G4 and correspondent on The Daily Show, Munn portrays the wife of a man who cannot make her pregnant, so he gathers his friends to break into a sperm bank to steal the deposit he left years ago.
“What I loved about the movie is the dynamic of this couple,” Munn, 32, said. “They’re in the early years of their marriage; they feel like they have time. Everything (on the reproductive side) seemed to be working before, but now there’s this problem.”
Babymakers is directed by Jay Chandrasekhar, who also appears in the film. Munn first met the director when he was a guest on her G4 program Attack of the Show! and she won a beerchugging contest. A friendship was born.
On G4 — which focuses on video game news and entertainment — Munn won fans for being funny, sexy and game savvy. It also caught the attention of Jon Stewart, who signed her to be a correspondent on his Emmy Award-winning comedy The Daily Show, which Munn says marked a turning point in her life.
“It put me on a different level,” said Munn. “I was the first female on the show in seven years and the first correspondent in five years. When you change up something that people watch everyday, they are going to take notice.”
One of those who noticed was Daily Show fan Sorkin.
The Newsroom is not Munn’s first stab at the news or being part of an ensemble cast on television. The Oklahoma-born, Tokyo-raised Munn majored in journalism in college and worked for a time as a sports reporter. She guest starred on numerous TV shows before being cast in the 2011 NBC series, Perfect Couples.