John Mulaney put his heart out for his wife Olivia Munn.
The comedian made a surprise appearance at the InStyle 2024 Imagemaker Awards on Oct. 24 to honour the Newsroom actress, with whom he shares two children: 3-year-old son Malcolm and 1-month-old daughter Méi.
He presented her with the Woman of Impact Award, which celebrated her efforts in advocating for women’s health following her breast cancer diagnosis in 2023.
“Olivia saving lives by speaking her truth is not surprising to me,” John began. “Olivia is constantly trying to keep me out of danger and keep me alive through a series of texts throughout our entire relationship.”
The comedian then pulled out his phone to share a funny example of one of their text conversations, adding a personal touch to the moment.
“This was like the 200th time I took our son for a walk in a stroller in Chicago,” John shared. “She wrote me out of nowhere [with] no context, ‘Please be so careful today. So many crazy things can come out of nowhere.’”
He added, “I texted back, ‘Like what?’ Olivia responded, ‘Crazy cars.’ You don’t hear enough about crazy cars!”
The comedian became more serious as he opened up about Olivia’s difficult journey with luminal B breast cancer, a diagnosis she received in early 2023.
“About a year [after her diagnosis], Olivia shared her story,” he explained. “Her cancer journey. This was a cancer that was not detected from a BRCA gene test, it was not detected by a mammogram. It was detected because she took a heretofore not-that-known test called the lifetime breast cancer risk assessment test and they found that she had a 37 percent chance of breast cancer.”
“And about a month later, she was having a double mastectomy.”
“She shared her story to help anyone she could,” John, who tied the knot with Olivia in July after three years together, continued.
“According to the National Cancer Institute, in the week after Olivia shared the story of her breast cancer journey, there was a 4,000 percent increase in women visiting the breast cancer risk assessment. That was the first week.”
“We learned a lot from it,” John further shared. “We learned she would need five surgeries. We learned there was a risk of lymphedema. We learned that if we had not caught it when we caught it, things could have been a lot worse.”
Adding a touch of humour, he joked, “I also learned it’s not pronounced ‘masectomy,’ it’s pronounced ‘mastectomy.’ It has a T in it. It shouldn’t. It should be ‘masectomy.’ It’s ironic that the word itself has a part that should be removed, I think.”
