Newsroom star ‘makes nerds look good’

MANILA, Philippines - “I make nerds look good.”

Hollywood actress Olivia Munn delivered the line flawlessly that it became one of the quotable quotes from the first season of the HBO original series The Newsroom.

Olivia is the brilliant, strong-willed but socially-awkward financial news analyst Sloan Sabbith in the series (created by the Oscar-winning Aaron Sorkin and topbilled by Jeff Daniels as news anchor Will McAvoy) which tells the behind-the-scenes drama of a fictional US cable program on a “quixotic mission” to do news well amidst a ratings-driven tug-of-war for viewers.

In real life, Olivia isn’t really any different. The 33-year-old Asian-American (her mom is Chinese) can be witty, sexy, opinionated and funny all at once, as we saw for ourselves during a recent Singapore press junket for The Newsroom Season 2. Nevertheless, Olivia, a regular on hottest-women lists of men’s magazines, revealed that there are people who can hardly reconcile her playing Sloan.

“People ask me if it’s hard playing an attractive person who is also an economist. To me, that’s such a silly question! One, I don’t think of myself as, ‘Oh, I’m this attractive person playing this.’ The way you look has nothing to do with how intelligent you are,” said Olivia, who a few years back penned a bestselling book on her “misadventures as a Hollywood geek.” “That’s the great thing about Sloan. She doesn’t define herself by the way people see her.”

Olivia had a considerable say on how her character would look. â€œI was very specific on how I wanted Sloan to look. Nowadays, you have journalists wearing flashy jewelry and colorful outfits. I’m not a big fan of that because I don’t want it to take it away from the information she was giving. They’re talking about, for example, a school shooting and they’re wearing this massive jewelry. It’s distracting to me personally. So, I wanted Sloan to wear a professional and fitted suit, but nothing baggy that seems like she’s apologizing for being a woman.”

What she considers the best part of playing Sloan is “the response I’ve received from so many women.”

“I really love the response that I don’t play Sloan like overtly strong, in-your-face characters but one who has an inner strength,” said Olivia who tries to reflect much of her Asian cultural background (“that pride, respect for others and inner strength”) in her acting. “Many women are wanting a female character on TV or in pop culture who isn’t always trying too hard to prove herself in a man’s world.”

The opportunity to be part of Newsroom didn’t come to her easily though. For the actress who has starred in movies like Magic Mike and Iron Man 2 and done TV shows mostly comedy-oriented, she practically invited herself to the auditions.

Originally, she felt that the casting crew didn’t want to see her “because I wasn’t some actress with Broadway credentials. You know, there’s the Broadway people, and the rest of the world. I was just this Asian girl who came from YouTube or something. ‘Oh, she’s not of our pedigree,’ I thought they’d think.”

Olivia went to audition anyway for what initially was a “small role,” even turning down other bigger projects. 

For her, what immediately stood out was the script that differed from all else she was reading at that time. But the biggest draw was the chance to work with Sorkin (the writing genius behind The West Wing and movies like A Few Good Men, Moneyball, The Social Network, etc.) whom Olivia said provides every single episode “which is very rare for someone of his stature.”

She shared, “There was only one episode all-season long where we didn’t get the script until the night before, so I kinda went into shock. The very first scene I had the next day was this big one where Sam Waterston and I were to have this big fight. There were so many levels I wanted to bring to it. So, I worked on it all night long. I stayed up till 5 a.m. working on it, and I cried from 2 to 3 a.m. My friend was like, ‘You can’t do this, stop crying!’ and I was like, ‘Yes I can, I just have to cry for an hour, let me cry!’”

Olivia was referring to the scene — one of the most memorable in the previous season — wherein she was confronted by the veteran actor, who plays her unapologetically old-school boss Charlie Skinner, for shifting to Japanese on live American television after an interpreter gave inaccurate translations of Sloan’s interviewee.

“After I did my scene, I heard some commotion by the video. Sorkin jumped out of his chair, clapped his hands and yelled that’s some (expletive) cast! I wasn’t sure what he meant though. But that was definitely my most special moment. You know, Sorkin works so hard on the script. If I can make him happy, then I’m good.”

Based on the Season 2 pilot, which The STAR previewed during the Singapore junket, Sloan’s scenes will continue to make fans happy. Olivia has fascinating exchanges, again, with Waterston as well as with Thomas Sadowski, who plays program producer Don Keefer. Spoiler alert: Don ends his romance with associate producer Maggie (played by Alison Pill) who now looks different after something happened to her while on assignment in Uganda. With that, a possible romantic angle may (or may not) happen for Don and Sloan. Viewers will get a sequel of sorts to this Season 1 dialogue — Don: Why are you still single? Sloan: Because you never asked me out.

This is just one of the running stories expected as The Newsroom returns on Asian TV tonight at 9 on HBO/HBO HD, with “corporate mandates and tangled personal relationships.” Season 2 sets off with the news staff finding themselves in a legal situation tantamount to a crippling network crisis, stemming from an airing of a story — the consequences and circumstances of which will unfold in the rest of the season. There are no bombastic speeches from Will McAvoy, which set the tone of the first season. Of course, as in any real newsroom, there’s nothing to be bombastic about a story that gets you into “trouble.”

Speaking of Will McAvoy, Daniels’ portrayal has merited an Emmy nomination, to which Olivia said, â€œI’m so excited for Jeff Daniels because he’s worked so hard and he’s so brilliant. To me, he’s our show, so it’s very exciting that he got all these nominations.”

She also praised the comedic streak of the entire cast (which also includes Emily Mortimer, Dev Patel, John Gallagher Jr.) on and off the screen because “we’re doing this really serious, hard material, but in between each take, we’re laughing and joking around and you learn a lot from them. Some actors take it so seriously, but you kind of need (a) break with some levity.” 

Olivia, who was widely tipped to get an Emmy nomination this year but unfortunately didn’t snag one, still feels happy and honored to be in a position “to be nominated or overlooked.”

Another person happy for her? Her mom who, according to Olivia, is happy and proud of her work, and that she has somehow put her college degree to good use.

Olivia said, “I majored in journalism. In college, I was writing for the college and I had interned at the local station, an NBC affiliate. I really wanted to tell stories, and that’s what I think a journalist does.

“But nowadays, I think it’s so difficult to be a journalist. We, as a society, have made it difficult for a journalist to yes, not be biased, and not be forced to turn (news) into a salacious story because of the ratings. There are so many cable news programs, radio programs, blogs and Twitter feeds, that it’s so difficult to get the story out… A journalist can get a bad rep, but on the other hand, some are admirably going off to war just to get these really hard stories.

“But I don’t know. I think I prefer pretending to be a journalist,” she said with a laugh, “and my mom is happy that I get to use my degree somewhat.”