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For many actresses in Hollywood, being labeled difficult, even for simply standing your ground, can have lasting repercussions for their career. Olivia Munn is opening up about her own experience working with a director she claimed later wanted to "ruin her career" because they had creative differences on set.
On a recent episode of Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast, Munn opened up about her time as Sloan Sabbith on The Newsroom, with Shepard noting that television series can be difficult with different directors coming in to lead episodes, per People. While she enjoyed the overall experience working on the HBO series, she had some less-than-pleasant experiences with one of the directors.
The X-Men: Apocalypse actress recalled having creative differences with an unnamed director who wanted her to continue certain storylines while she, as the actress portraying the character, felt that she knew how her character should react. One issue they clashed on was when her love interest did insider trading from information he got from her character. While Munn believed her character would be "angry," the director wanted her to laugh it off instead because Sloan would find it "kind of funny."
"It got to this place where there was one scene, and I was like, 'No. I'm not doing [that].' And he said, 'Look, it's my job as a director to see all the different colors of the rainbow and you are looking at only one color, and I don't think you realize how you're coming off,'" she said. "And I said, 'How am I coming off?' And he said, 'Really forceful and strong.' And I said, 'Great. That's what I wanted.' And I walked away."
Munn is still "happy" for how she handled the disagreements because she said that the director's suggestions would ultimately land on her if viewers took issue with certain scenes.
"I would have been the one. People would have been like, 'Oh, look at her character. Look how she's playing it,'" she said. "They wouldn't even care if I even said, 'It was him.' So I just stayed to my convictions."
The New Girl actress also alleged that the director tried to influence one of her future roles. She recalled receiving a call from her manager about getting a part in a movie but that the Newsroom director reportedly told the creative team that she was "late all the time and really combative." She especially took issue with the claim she wasn't on time because she "was never late" as she lived less than 10 minutes away from set.
"He was just trying to bash me," she said, adding, "And I told my reps, 'Please tell the directors this.' And then I still got the role. But I will always remember that, just because of our conflicts of how we approached a role, he wanted to ruin my chances of getting anything else."
Earlier this year, Munn opened up about the time she was offered $1 million to stay silent about a traumatic incident on the set of a movie.