Olivia Munn has become one of the more vocal actresses in Hollywood. She’s previously spoken out about issues on the set of “The Predator” as well as some surprises she noticed when she signed on to star in “X-Men: Apocalypse.” And now, she’s voicing her concerns for the way male filmmakers are treated better than female counterparts, an issue she noticed while filming the aforementioned ‘Apocalypse.’
Speaking to Variety, Munn discussed what she saw as a fundamental difference between how men and women are treated on set. She specifically recalled an incident during the filming of “X-Men: Apocalypse,” with director Bryan Singer, that showed the actress how a male filmmaker is given a second chance in ways that female filmmakers never are.
“It’s the problem that I always had in this business, way before the #MeToo movement exposed so much,” she explained. “You’re in it and you see these people who keep failing up, and they’re not that great and you think, ‘Really?’ When we shot ‘X-Men,’ I never shot a huge movie like that before. I didn’t know what was right or wrong, but I did know that it seems strange that Bryan Singer could check out and say he had a thyroid issue.”
Munn continued, “Instead of going to a doctor in Montreal, which is a very high-level, working city, he said he had to go to L.A. And he was gone for about 10 days is my recollection. And he said, ‘Continue. Keep filming.’ We’d be on set, I remember there’s a big scene that we’d have, and we’d come back from lunch and then one of Bryan’s assistants would come up and show us a cell phone with a text message on it. And he texted to the actors, ‘Hey guys. I’m busy right now. But just go ahead and start filming without me.’”
Because of her inexperience on film sets for blockbuster productions, Munn thought Singer’s antics were strange, but she didn’t know that it wasn’t a commonplace occurrence because of how everyone else treated it.
“Come to find out it is really strange and it wasn’t OK,” she said. “But this person is allowed to continue to go on. Fox still gives him ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ and then we all know what happened.”
Ouch.
Munn is making a reference to Singer’s highly-publicized dismissal from the set of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” where he was replaced by Dexter Fletcher after a number of alleged similar issues regarding his on-set professionalism. And even after that, Singer was still hired to helm the big-budget “Red Sonja” film adaptation. Of course, that didn’t last long, as #MeToo allegations struck, and Singer was fired from that production, with no projects on the horizon.
“X-Men: Apocalypse” would go on to become one of the lowest-grossing films in the ‘X-Men’ franchise, as well as being generally disliked by critics and fans.
