Olivia Munn Says She Was Ostracised By Her Co-Stars After Reporting A Sex Offender On Set

Ahead of its international release later this week, sci-fi thriller The Predator underwent last-minute edits after actress Olivia Munn brought to Fox’s attention that a scene featured a child sex offender. Now, while ‘contractually obliged‘ to do promotion during Toronto International Film Festival, Munn has said that she was ‘disheartened’ by the process and tepid response from the film’s cast and director.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times last week, the studio deleted a scene featuring Munn and actor Steven Wilder Striegel after Munn became aware of, then told the studio of Striegel’s criminal history.

In 2010, Striegel pleaded guilty to having a sexually predatory relationship with a 14-year-old female relative, and spent six months in prison. Striegel is a lifelong friend of Shane Black, the director of The Predator, who has cast him in several other films, such as The Nice Guys and Iron Man 3.

“Several weeks ago, when the studio learned the details, his one scene in the film was removed within 24 hours,” said Twentieth Century Fox in a statement. “We were not aware of his background during the casting process due to legal limitations that impede studios from running background checks on actors.”

The resulting promo period has, naturally, focused on how both the cast and studio were unaware of Striegel’s history, with Black backing out of interviews. Black has released a statement in which he says while he was aware of the conviction, he previously believed Striegel had been “caught up in a bad situation”, and apologised for letting himself be “mislead by a friend.”

Black also apologised to the cast for “having Steve around them without giving them a voice in the decision”, though in the interview Munn says she wished he had also reached out to her and the cast privately.

“I haven’t heard from Shane,” she told The Hollywood Review. “I did see his apology that he put out. I appreciate the apology. I would have appreciated it more if it was directed toward me privately before it went public and I had to see it online with everyone else.”

The #MeToo movement called out abusers. But they’re not the only ones in the wrong. Those who know about abuse and not only do nothing but continue to put abusers in positions of power are complicit. https://t.co/QngLCk9fzj

— om (@oliviamunn) September 6, 2018

Munn also stated she had been confronted by a lack of support from her fellow cast, alleging several co-stars dropped out of the interview circuit.

“It’s honestly disheartening to have to fight for something so hard that is just so obvious to me. I don’t know why this has to be such a hard fight. I do feel like I’ve been treated by some people that I’m the one who went to jail or I’m the one that put this guy on set. I found out, and [it] was really important to me to have the scene deleted.”

“Now when I’m being asked about it, I don’t know how to lie about it. I don’t know how to pretend, I don’t know how to skirt around the issue. I just know how to be honest about it. It’s a very lonely feeling to be sitting here by myself when I should be sitting here with the rest of the cast.”

“I don’t care if it’s my movie,” she later told the LA Times. “I don’t care if this movie was going to give me $100 million, it’s not worth being quiet over that, my silence is not for sale.”

Since then, co-star Sterling K. Brown has taken to Twitter to join Keegan Michael-Key, Trevante Rhodes and Augusto Aguilera in expressing public support for Munn, saying “we have a right to know who we’re working with”.

.@oliviamunn I’m sorry you’re feeling so isolated, my dear. And I’m sorry you’ve been the only one to speak up publicly. I was not at #TIFF so I didn’t have an opportunity to be there with you. There are two main issues as far as I see it. First, what is and is not forgivable?… https://t.co/NQQpoO9kPa

— Sterling K Brown (@SterlingKBrown) September 9, 2018

The Predator is out in Australia Thursday 13 September.