Why Everyone's Talking About Olivia

She’s sexy, she’s smart, and she’s unapologetic about who she is. Here’s why Olivia Munn tops our list of women we look up to.

bySophie Hong Jun 2016

She’s sexy, she’s smart, and she’s unapologetic about who she is. Here’s why Olivia Munn tops our list of women we look up to.

It’s easy to hate Olivia Munn, and she herself is all too aware of it. After all, the former TV journalist’s initial fanbase consisted mostly of hormonal teenage boys who tuned in to Attack of the Show! every week to watch her talk about video games, gadgets and comic books. Sometimes, she’d even be clad in a bikini or a sexy superhero costume. Other times, she’d be in segments filled with sexual innuendos, like jumping into a giant pie filled with chocolate and whipped cream, or being blindfolded while her male co-host puts stuff into her mouth, or taking a big bite out of a sausage dangled on the end of a string without using her hands.

“I’m easy to hate, I get it,” she told Salon shortly after she landed the coveted spot as a correspondent on The Daily Show in June 2010. That casting decision was met with a fair bit of controversy, as some felt that Olivia lacked the credentials as a female comic and only got the job because, well, she’s hot.

But if there’s anything that we learnt from Kim Kardashian’s “When you’re like, I have nothing to wear LOL” nude selfie, is there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being hot and proud of it. Sure, Olivia might have been labelled a sex symbol from the get-go, but it’s another thing to own that label like a complete boss, and unapologetically so.

“People have so much to say about Lena Dunham getting naked on Girls. To me, that is more of a problem. That’s where it’s unfair: the judgment that is put on women for how we look,” she said in an interview with Fashion, referring to the recent plastic surgery rumours surrounding her. “If you’re looking bad, you have to cover up.

If you’re looking good, you’ve done something or made a deal with the devil,” she huffed, effectively shutting naysayers down.

And that, ladies and gentleman, is why Olivia Munn is our #WCW, all day every day.

TRUTH BOMBS

With her obvious good looks, it’s easy to typecast the 35-year-old actress as the token hot chick. But it’s unfair to say that Olivia got her foothold in the industry just by winning big at the genetic lottery. Her filmography includes the Steven Soderbergh-directed Magic Mike, mega blockbuster Iron Man 2, and Aaron Sorkin’s critically-acclaimed political drama series The Newsroom, where she plays the role of senior financial reporter Sloan Sabbith. On the comedy front, Olivia is no slouch either. She’s had roles in Steven Carrell and Tina Fey’s Date Night, Zooey Deschanel’s New Girl, and Mortdecai alongside Johnny Depp and Gwyneth Paltrow. So what if she’s appeared, scantily-clad, on the pages of men’s magazine?

“It’s ridiculous to say that a woman can’t be funny and also be sexy,” she told Salon. If anyone needs further convincing, let it be known that Olivia’s got the approval of comedy genius Tina Fey. In the same interview with Salon, Olivia revealed it was Tina who suggested her for the main character of Leigh on NBC’s short-lived series, Perfect Couples.

“[The producers asked Tina] who are the funniest actresses out there right now. I do not think that Tina Fey was looking at my boobs. I do not think she was thinking, ‘Oh, Olivia is eye candy.’ I think that Tina said, ‘She’s funny.’”

GEEK CRED

It’s no secret that Olivia has a geeky side. She counts firstperson shooter game Halo as one of her favourite video games and comes from a family of comic book fans. Before she was part of a Comic Con panel, she was amongst the throngs of reporters who covered the event.

It seems befitting then, that Olivia is hitting the big screen in X-Men: Apocalypse as Psylocke – a telepathic and telekinetic mutant who is also highly-skilled in sword fighting and martial arts. And before you ask, yes, Psylocke’s revealing latex ensemble is overly-sexualised (just like Olivia’s public image) and she knows that.

“Her costume was given to her by somebody else – somebody else created that for her. So it’s not her choice and it didn’t matter to her, like it doesn’t matter how you see me or what I have to wear. What’s always mattered for Psylocke, I think, is how strong she is, how smart she is, how lethal she is… what she looked like had no bearing on how strong she was,” Olivia said to Refinery 29.

WONDER WOMAN

In her 2010 memoir Suck It, Wonder Woman!: The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek, Olivia opened up about how she was bullied and shunned in school. Olivia has also publicly talked about her struggle with anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and how she had to deal with trichotillomania – the compulsive urge to pull out one’s hair – when she was 26 (in Olivia’s case, it was her eyelashes).

“With my anxiety, if I’m not in the mood to go out to dinner, I can’t. I almost feel paralysed,” she said in an interview with Good Housekeeping last year, adding that she’s coping with it through therapy, exercise and rest. So she’s not invulnerable like Wonder Woman, but there’s no denying that Olivia is kicking a**. Never one to mince her words, she’s also quick to shut down engagement (she’s been dating football quarterback Aaron Rodgers for two years now) rumours.

Her frustrations are certainly understandable, considering there’s so much more to her than her looks. Film work aside, the actress, who is of Chinese and Caucasian descent, has been very vocal about her support for certain causes. She’s worked with PETA on their campaigns against the fur and circus trade, and is also involved in the “It’s On Us” campaign: an awareness initiative launched by President Obama to end sexual assault on college campuses.

“Younger women don’t have their voice yet; they haven’t figured out their strength,” she told Fashion.

“It’s really important that women see others in the public eye who don’t back down when someone pushes them.” And that’s exactly why we need someone like Olivia.