X-Men: Apocalypse actress Olivia Munn unloaded on director Bryan Singer in an interview with Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh about gender inequality in the entertainment industry.
As Variety notes, “In late 2017, Singer was fired in the middle of the production of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody' for allegedly not coming to work and clashing with actor Rami Malek. Other stories followed about how Singer had also been missing on the set of ‘X-Men: Apocalypse' with reporting from anonymous sources.”
“It's the problem that I always had in this business, way before the #MeToo movement exposed so much,” said Munn. “You're in it and you see these people who keep failing up, and they're not that great and you think, ‘Really?' 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.”
Added Munn: “And he texted to 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. 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.“
Variety adds: “Months before production started on [X-Men: Apocalypse], two lawsuits alleged that Singer had sexually abused underage boys. The accusations, which were later dismissed, painted the portrait of Singer as a hedonistic figure in the entertainment industry with a questionable work ethic.”
Read the full interview here.
