Director Bryan Singer, while arguably a talented filmmaker, has seen his share of controversy over the years for alleged sexual abuse of underage boys, to erratic behavior, to being a non-presence on set when his job is to captain the ship as a director. Actress Olivia Munn worked with Singer on 2016's X-MEN: APOCALYPSE, playing Psylocke in the film, & she's getting very candid about his behavior and how the experience makes her appreciate working with professional filmmakers.
Munn did an interview with "Variety, that is being made puiblic now, back in February to promote the premiere of her new movie VIOLET. The film is about a female movie executive and it was set to premiere at the South by Southwest film festival before the event was canceled in the wake of coronavirus concerns. The film is directed and written by Justine Bateman and Munn, while discussing celebrating female filmmakers, shifted the conversation to her experience on X-MEN: APOCALYPSE and describes a time that Singer walked off set in Montreal to fly to Los Angeles for approximately 10 days to deal with a "thyroid issue", which left the production scrambling without a director:
"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. 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."
Munn goes on to discuss that she never thought this stuff was normal but once she saw that this wasn't on the level with her fellow actors or the powers that be, she knew her feelings were right:
"And he texted the actors, "Hey guys. I'm busy right now. But just go ahead and start filming without me." And we'd be like, "OK." And I never thought any of it was normal, but I didn't realize that other people also thought it wasn't normal. And the other people who thought it wasn't normal would be people at high levels, people who make decisions on whether to hire this person."
Tales of Singer's behavior on that particular set emerged after 20th Century Fox, the studio behind X-MEN, hired Singer to direct 2017's Queen biopic, BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY. In late 2017, Singer was fired in the middle of production of BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY for allegedly not coming to work and clashing with actor Rami Malek. It was around this time that more stories surfaced, from anonymous sources, that he was also missing in action on the set of X-MEN: APOCALYPSE. Munn acknowledges this with her next statement that he was still rewarded with BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY despite the very same studio knowing how he behaved while making APOCALYPSE:
"Come to find out it is really strange and it wasn't OK. But this person is allowed to continue to go on. Fox still gives him Bohemian Rhapsody, and then we all know what happened. I'm saying even before the #MeToo stuff was exposed, stuff that's really horrendous and just nauseating to be around, there's also just the bad behavior of people getting away with it. And no one in the world is so talented that it merits disrespecting other people and their time. And there are so many talented people waiting for an opportunity."
I feel like the world at large has an opinion about Olivia Munn because she can be very vocal about what she stands for and does speak up, even when it means she may take a hit, but I don't think she's wrong here. The Bryan Singer messiness has been on the outlier of the industry for awhile now and the fact that it came out that he was less than professional on APOCALYPSE, only for him to get BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY, goes a long way to show that sometimes bad behavior can be rewarded. In the time since all of this, I think it's a mainstream notion that Singer is a very polarizing figure which is why he's not really attached to any projects now but it's a shame it took so long to get there. "Variety" did reach out to Singer's publicist Howard Bragman and he said "He saw doctors in Montreal and then came back to see doctors in Los Angeles. and to the best of our recollection, it only affected two days of shooting." I guess the thyroid issue out of all her statements was the only one they wished to address.
What are YOUR thoughts on Munn's statements?