Olivia Munn is still on her journey back to health after being diagnosed with breast cancer last year.
The actress, 43, revealed to Vogue in a sprawling new interview that she underwent her fifth “significant surgery” since her diagnosis just last month—a full hysterectomy.
“I took out my uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries,” she said during the remarkably candid talk about her battle with cancer.
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The decision, which means Munn is no longer able to become pregnant, was not one she made lightly. She’d been prescribed Lupron to suppress her estrogen as a part of her treatment plan, but the drug caused her “next-level, debilitating exhaustion,” she recalled. The only alternative, her doctors told her, was the hysterectomy, which would eliminate her body’s ability to produce estrogen altogether.
“It was a big decision to make, but it was the best decision for me because I needed to be present for my family,” she explained.
But she and her partner of three years, comedian John Mulaney, 41, still plan to grow their family. (The couple’s first child, Malcolm, was born in November 2021.) Munn told Vogue that she’s frozen her eggs three times in the past decade, most recently in response to her April 2023 diagnosis.
“We just wanted a few more eggs,” she said. “At my age, one in every 10 eggs are healthy, and we were hoping to make one embryo from this retrieval.”
Instead, they got two. “John and I just started crying,” Munn shared. “It was just so exciting because not only did we get it in one retrieval, but it also meant that I didn’t have to keep putting myself at risk. It was just amazing.”
They plan to use a surrogate in the future, a prospect that once might have terrified Munn. “With a surrogate, you have to try to go find a version of yourself somewhere out in the world,” she said. “Somebody that you trust as much as yourself to live their life as a pregnant woman the same way that you would.
“But a surrogate isn’t a scary prospect to me anymore because there’s nothing I can do. I don’t have the ability to carry a baby anymore, so if we want to build our family, this is our option.”
The Vogue profile’s Sunday publication marks two months since Munn went public with her diagnosis, revealing to the world that doctors had found luminal B in both of her breasts. The Newsroom alum decided to use her disclosure as a public health initiative, urging others to consult their doctors about their risk for cancer.
The fact that her obstetrician-gynecologist had calculated her risk, she wrote in a social media screed at the time, “saved my life.”
Within 10 months of her diagnosis, she’d undergone a double mastectomy and three other procedures: a lymph node dissection, reconstructive breast surgery and a nipple-saving procedure known as nipple delay, all of which she shared with her followers on social media.
“We are very protective of our little life, but I knew from the day she was diagnosed that the risk assessment test her doctor had done open-and-shut saved her life,” Mulaney told Vogue. So, while we like to lead our life privately, I was completely supportive of Olivia sharing her story.”
