Olivia Munn Dished on ‘Smart, Funny, Articulate’ John Mulaney – and the ‘Risk of Being Called Messy’

Actor Olivia Munn dished about her boyfriend and baby daddy, comedian John Mulaney, as the two grow ever closer to becoming first-time parents. Munn revealed the pregnancy news leaked before she was ready and she has new anxieties while expecting. But she was seemingly a little tight-lipped when it came to her bond with Mulaney, though he gave her and their love a lot of public credit in his recovery.

However, she gushed a little about going on the road with him, and how smart, funny, and articulate he is. And she also opened up about facing the scrutinizing eye of a sometimes unkind public together.  

Olivia Munn was on the road with John Mulaney

Some fans wondered how Munn might have felt about jokes Mulaney made during his From Scratch shows. But it seems she cleared the air on that in a recent Los Angeles Times interview. She thought at least one joke was funny and “healing” — a joke about how their pregnancy news received mixed reviews.

“He’s so funny, and he’s so articulate, and he’s so smart. The first time he made that joke, I remember laughing,” she gushed. “I’d be with him on the road, and I would hear him tell this joke, and I did feel a sense of healing with it.”

But Munn didn’t stop there. She seemed to take aim at spectators who vocally disapprove of the relationship.

Olivia Munn isn’t trying to ‘play the game’ or have outside observers call her ‘messy’

As far as Munn is concerned, she’s been doing this long enough to know how to handle it. She doesn’t want to risk being called “messy,” so she said she won’t “play the game at all.”  

“It’s definitely not foreign for me to have people speculate incorrectly about things and to have rumors run rampant in one way,” Munn explained of her public history. Notably, insider gossip and rumors have placed her close to the end of a few famous marriages, which might be what she’s referring to.

So, she’s trying to be careful not to “feed into a narrative that’s just not true,” but noted her belief people tend to “ignore really specific public signs and actions that completely contradict the false narrative.”

The interview didn’t make entirely clear which narrative she’s saying is false or which “specific public signs” people overlook. There are several conversations happening among Mulaney’s fans daily on different subreddits, and many creative theories bouncing around. But some might guess she’s referring to speculation that their relationship somehow interrupted his marriage.

“If I try to say anything, I run the risk of being called messy or not telling the truth,” Munn explained. That seems to mean she would be accused of not telling the truth. She concluded, “The only way to win, for me, is to pull back and to not play the game at all.”

Olivia Munn: ‘There’s no way anyone could know what any of [John Mulaney’s] relationships were’

While not feeding any narratives, Munn also let some random spectators know they’ve got it wrong. “They think they know our relationship so well,” she said, “When in reality, they don’t.”

“There’s no way anyone could know what any of his relationships were or what our relationship is,” she claimed.

That said, Mulaney isn’t legally divorced from artist Anna Marie Tendler yet. He reportedly hired a new legal firm to get that done more quickly as he awaits his baby’s arrival. But before their split, he shared stories about his relationship with Tendler onstage and in interviews. And some fans made an emotional investment.

Now it seems most have moved on from the divorce news and decided whether to stay or go as Mulaney’s fans. But whether they accept he’s moved on with Munn, she says she’s got a plan to win by not playing at all.