Olivia Munn Says Her ‘Surprise’ Pregnancy With John Mulaney Was ‘A Blessing’
Olivia Munn is opening up her pregnancy — albeit very carefully.
The actor and former “The Daily Show” correspondent appeared on Tuesday’s episode of the “She MD” podcast with OB-GYN Dr. Thaïs Aliabadi, who delivered Munn’s son, Malcolm, in 2021, and later diagnosed Munn with breast cancer in 2023.
During their conversation, Munn opened up about having a child at age 41 with her boyfriend, John Mulaney, around the same time the comedian was splitting from his wife of six years, Anna Marie Tendler.
“It was a surprise pregnancy. I did not have any doctor team ready. I had no idea,” the “The Newsroom” star told Aliabadi nearly two minutes into the episode.
Munn then credited Aliabad for being an “amazing” doctor.
“It was the most amazing birth. The labor and delivery was a dream,” Munn said, before adding that Aliabad also extended a lot of empathy toward her during a complicated period in her life.
“It was, surprisingly [an easy pregnancy], but in different ways it was difficult. Honestly, [Aliabadi] held my hand through the whole thing. ... She really guided me along the way, not just with what was going on physically, but emotionally as well.”
Munn went on to explain that she “wasn’t” really thinking about having children at the time she got pregnant. She said thanks to getting her eggs frozen at the ages of 33 and 39, she didn’t feel much anxiety about her “biological clock.”
“If I froze my eggs that means that I don’t have to race the clock,” Munn said about her reasoning for undergoing the often costly procedure that’s typically not covered by insurance. “It means that I don’t have to try to find a partner to make this happen, it means that I don’t have to make a decision on what I want to do, and it just gives me the gift of time. It allows me to just breathe.”
When Munn was asked if she used any of her frozen eggs to conceive her son, she said she hadn’t.
“[That was an] accident,” Aliabad said jokingly.
“That was a blessing,” Munn clarified.
Although Aliabad helped Munn, the “X-Men” alum also admitted she was a bit of a mess during her pregnancy.
“I looked nothing like what I see people look like when they’re pregnant. I had a six-day window where it looked cute,” Munn said. “I was wearing the same sweatpants and the same flannel shirt everywhere because I just couldn’t get it together.”
She said she couldn’t help but compare herself to other pregnant women.
“I had friends who were pregnant at the same time or had their babies after me, and yet they snapped back like that. Or their pregnancy outfits were so cute. Or they already had their nurseries done. [My] nursery wasn’t done until days before, I mean days before. ... I’m sure it’s an illusion, but I don’t even have the energy to make it.”
She also opened up about some of her pregnancy impulses.
“I put on 60 pounds — that’s when I stopped counting. I stayed inside a lot during my pregnancy, and I was really craving pizza and Lucky Charms. My body did not snap back afterwards, I did not lose the weight. Right now I’m doing a lot of laser treatments on my stomach,” Mun said, adding that the upper part of her stomach looks like a “deflated balloon.”
But Munn said that despite the changes to her body, she’d do it all again for her son.
“I’d give my whole body up, I don’t care,” Munn said. “If someone said to me, ‘You’re going to look completely different than you ever lived in your life, if you’re going to have this baby boy.’ I’d say, ‘OK,’ in a heartbeat. No problem.”
Although Munn and Mulaney have only been dating for a few years, Munn told Huffpost in 2015 that she was a huge fan of the former “Saturday Night Live” writer and recounted a time she ran into Mulaney with Tendler at a wedding.
“We were at a wedding together, and I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, do you and your fiancé want to go have dinner or something and go hang out?’” she said at the time.
Munnn’s fangirling did not end there.
“At first it was cool, and then I kept going up to him at the wedding like, ‘So you having fun?’”
She continued: “I was just so obsessed with hanging out with and talking with him.”
You can listen to Munn’s interview in full here — which includes how she and Aliabadi discovered that she had breast cancer despite receiving negative mammograms.
