She is chatting with us between takes that involve rapid gunfire. Before each call of “action,” an assistant director warns that loud gunfire is about to go off. Initially Munn is only feigning concern about Frankie’s proximity to the explosions (she covers his small ears and holds him close). But after the actual gunfire sends the pup fleeing from her arms and out of the tent, we have to pause and start the interview again… after, like her onscreen character of Dr. Casey Brackett, she has saved a troubled soul. It is one of the more bemusing moments during our trip to the Vancouver set of The Predator, but it also is somewhat indicative of her character. By her own consideration, Munn may play the first human in a Predator movie not scared of the titular monster. “This is like seeing God to her; this is what she’s studying,” Munn says about her scientist who is a far cry from the victimized and marginalized female characters in the original Predator movies. Instead Casey Brackett is a scientist who is almost on a different track altogether from the rest of the film’s Dirty Half-Dozen badasses, including Boyd Holbrook as the leader of a motley crew of damaged anti-heroes played by Keegan Michael-Key, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen, Trevante Rhodes, and Augusto Augilera. “If you ever see a dog that’s growling at you, and just a stray dog, the thought is to run away,” Munn says. “But then they start to chase you. So when I see them, I don’t go, ‘Oh my God, this dog is going to kill me!’ For me, someone who loves animals and loves dogs, I’m like, ‘Where is its owner? What’s going on?’ You’re trying to understand it more. So there is an element of realizing when you are in danger, but at the same time, trying to assess, and at the same time she doesn’t jump to conclusions because it doesn’t look like them, and it’s not speaking their same language. That doesn’t mean you shoot it right away.” It’s an interesting angle for the new take on Predator, and one that Munn is all too happy to play in. While she didn’t even become a fan of the 1987 classic bullets-and-biceps movie until signing onto the project in 2016, Munn appreciates a different tact to the alien invasion film. Indeed, in our below interview, she considers just not how her character interacts with the Predator, but how she interacts with other people—and passes a measure Munn holds herself to: Her parts now need to have their own lives and agency, even in action movies, as opposed to being accessories to her male co-stars. She might be the “token female” in The Predator, but with her input, as well as Shane Black and Fred Dekker’s screenplay, she isn’t what you’ve come to expect from this genre or franchise. Yeah, I play Dr. Casey Brackett, and this movie, it’s like there are two different stories in the beginning. There’s Boyd and Keegan, and Trevante and Thomas Jane, and Agusto, and they are the soldiers and they’re encountered with the Predator. And then on the other side, on this other story that’s going on, my character has been on a list from the CIA, because she is an evolutionary biologist, and because of her expertise and the things she’s been able to accomplish in her career, she is one of the top people when it comes to evolutionary biology. So she’s on a list by the CIA in case there’s ever connection with a higher lifeform. So at this point, she gets called into the labs to see what’s going on and try to offer her help. We see that you’re armed. Yes, I’m armed, but she’s a scientist— And they all have side-arms? So in regards to your character, we’ve interviewed people all day long about this [male] camaraderie. Do you think your character, as well as yourself as an actress, has a sense of isolation from the rest of this crew? Well, especially looking at it as a character, I think, sometimes, the fun things that maybe an actor might do is, “Oh, it would be so fun to feel like the outsider.” But I always look at it as what’s the most realistic thing? […] But realistically, there’s a moment where you’re like, “There are all these guys and then there’s me.” And the reality of “Okay, are these the good guys? Am I with the good guys?” Because there’s a lot of crazy stuff happening. There’s aliens and we’re running for our lives, and it all just kind of happens, and you have no idea. We’re all kind of absorbing, our characters are absorbing the moment of what’s happening as we’re running for our lives, and at the same time, for my character too as an evolutionary biologist, her whole life has been about is there higher life? And now she’s seeing it. But as soon as they band together, they’re in it together. Yeah, there’s a that scene we do, and it’s a small scene, it’s less than a quarter of a page, and it’s just her seeing pictures [of aliens] for the first time. And we didn’t discuss it or anything, but all the prep I do before that is that—seeing it is a very emotional experience. And where other people could be like, “Oh, this amazing, and holy crap and woah!” This is like seeing God to her. This is what she’s studying: How creatures change and evolve, and how it’s not scary. It is a very beautiful thing to see, so that was a big thing for me that I wanted her to—her whole life, this is something she’s been wanting to know about. Got herself onto the list on the CIA, got to the top so she would be discovered by people at the CIA, so that if anything ever happens, she’d be called on. And that’s basically everything she ever wanted. What I try to think of is I’m an animal lover, and so is Shane. So we were able to tap into that with this character as well. If you ever see a dog that’s growling at you, and just a stray dog, the thought is to run away. But then they start to chase you. So when I see them, I don’t go, “Oh my God, this dog is going to kill me!” For me, someone who loves animals and loves dogs, I’m like, “Where is its owner? What’s going on?” You’re trying to understand it more. So there is an element of realizing when you are in danger, but at the same time, trying to assess, and at the same time she doesn’t jump to conclusions because it doesn’t look like them, and it’s not speaking their same language. That doesn’t mean you shoot it right away. That’s a lesson for everyone in life. [Laughs] That’s a very good question. Make [the publicist] leave, and I’ll tell you. [Laughs] Was evolutionary biology something you researched? Same thing when I was on The Newsroom, learning about the economy, I really had to learn it. So on this one, I had to really understand just the science of what makes up simply a protein and hydrogen, and make up just life. And having to go start from there and moving on, but it’s fascinating. Could you talk about the first time you saw the original Predator and what kind of effect it had on you? What effect did it have on you? I loved it, and there’s a reason why it’s a classic. And I loved—it makes me nostalgic for that period of time where you could be cheesy but it wasn’t cheesy. We all love it, the original, so much that we have to remind ourselves, “Hey wait, pull it back, because now you look like you’re doing a spoof of your own movie.” It’s just such a great—I kept asking Shane could we do one where someone’s in the mud, that’s such a great [image]. I’m like, “Could I be in the mud?” But then I actually thought “no.” So if he did it, he gave it to someone else. What?! [Laughs] He’s got a great agent. So you’re jumping into the action realm with X-Men and now this. What attracts you to these kind of roles? What you guys saw when you saw the movie, the fight scene that we did, that was like maybe less than a quarter of what we filmed. I don’t know, Bryan [Singer] sent me a long text, and I can’t really remember what he said, but I think he was like, “Blah, blah, blah, I took it out.” But working on it, I didn’t realize I’d have to do so much training for it until I got there and I realized that my stunt double, who is very athletic and talented, had never been a stunt double before, because nobody was expecting me, or the character of Psyclocke, or really whoever played her, to be like, “This is important to me.” And since I have a background in martial arts and gymnastics and stuff, and I cared so much about the fight scenes for the character, I started training every day, and having to learn sword. They didn’t have a fight choreographer on that movie for whatever reason. Which you know, you have stunts, but you really need a fight choreographer, you know like those great movies like John Wick, and the people who end up directing them, and you have to have all those elements and respect all those elements of what it takes to make an action movie. But once I did that, I was hooked. I mean, I did all the fight scenes myself, and it was so rewarding and so fun. It’s impossible not to notice that you are a token female in this group of men, in a role fighting men. But to your earlier point, you were hired into this role, which is a starring role in an ensemble as a woman in which race was not a problem. So I’ve been on this kick that people really close to me, if they were here [they’d say], “I’m going to get something to drink.” Because they’re so tired of hearing me talk about it. So microaggression, the term was created to describe how non-black people treat black people. It’s an unconscious bias. That’s the biggest definition of it. It’s an unconscious bias, and we keep perpetuating that. So you take a scene, and it’ll be me and “John,” and it’ll be, “So okay, you guys are talking about how Pluto is no longer a planet.” Mutual topic, so what should we do? “Okay John, why don’t you open your laptop and pay some bills, and Olivia, why don’t you just put some dishes away?” And we keep seeing that. You see these conversations, and you think, “Okay!” Because as an actor, an actress, it’s an independent activity, you’re doing your thing. But then as little girls are watching it, those things seep into your head. It was not long ago when I was doing this scene in a movie, and the director asked me to look up to the guy and be like, “It’s not working.” And I was like, “But he wouldn’t look up at me.” Because these are the rules, the guy is never like “Uh, what’s what?” A guy just sits there with it. So I said I don’t want to do that, and then they don’t understand why. “Just do one take.” And I’m like, “All you need is one take.” [Laughs] And I just don’t want to do it. And I know that I look difficult in those situations, but thankfully I’ve been around people who listen… because that is a thing as a woman where you go, “Okay, if I even just speak up, will you think I’m ‘difficult?’” Men don’t ever think that, they just speak up. So then with this movie, I am, yes, the token female, but at least I was able to tackle the microaggression part. That she’s not having some guys come in to save her, but then she’s also not just this badass who knows how to wield a gun automatically, because I think that’s the other kind of microagression, because if women are going to be strong, they’ve got to be so fucking strong that they’re lifting off trucks of things. It’s like you can be competent and flawed, and all at the same time. But the next thing I want to talk of as the token female, and I know it’s hard, but you want to get to a place where the scripts that you involve yourself with pass the Bechdel Test, which I’m sure you guys all know. And it’s funny, because it’s easier to do but harder to find. I mean, that’s just the movies of that time, and so you enjoy it for what it is. We get almost too PC when it comes to race jokes or inappropriate jokes, and I think it doesn’t become life anymore on camera, and that’s what I love about Shane, because there are inappropriate jokes, and he’s like saying these things… you lose like the light from it. And I think we’ve gone too PC as a society. That we’ve almost gone the other way where everyone’s afraid to say anything. Were you able to do any improv on the set? So this movie, there’s been so much collaboration and just in the moment, just everyone coming up with stuff and thinking of stuff, and being present, that helps make the movie feel really fun and fresh, and alive. Until you get a text that he’s cut out three-quarters of your big action scene. For this particular movie, you’re saying your character has her own career and agency. Even if it’s a character you see for like one scene and that’s it, but you believe once you stop seeing her on-camera, you believe she has a life somewhere else, that’s what this character… a lot of times you see, most of the times, the woman—they work together, and he’s the spunky reporter who’s trying to get everything done, and she’s right there with him and just so in awe of him, and everything she does is just in reaction to him. And you see that so much, and I’ve felt that so much, and I’ve done that. But I want to play a character that’s like in real life, that she would exist if he doesn’t exist in the movie. We talk about how he skewers them. For example, our soldiers are just a little bit messy and things like that. But I don’t know if this is the right answer but it’s what I want to say right now in response. My honest response to what you’re saying is that we don’t really go that route with my character, we play her as real as possible. And any comedy that comes up is comedy that’s funny just because it’s real and it’s in the moment. That’s not trying to be a wink and a “hahaha.” It’s just funny because of the scenario, and we’ve never talked about it, but my gut instinct when you ask me that question is we’re not at that point for a minority actress. We’re not there for a minority actress, we still have to establish [the archetype] before we can go back and poke fun at the other ones, because we can’t poke fun at anything and be like, “See we’re not there anymore.” We are still there. He probably took eight guys down. I’m really proud of him. The Predator opens on Sept. 14.
