Olivia Munn details ‘brutal’ postpartum struggles that were ‘more difficult than going through cancer’

Olivia Munn says her postpartum struggles were “more difficult” than her battle with breast cancer.

“When you stop breastfeeding immediately, your hormones drop, and postpartum can come in like a tornado,” the “Newsroom” star told Self magazine for a cover story, published Thursday.

Munn, 44, welcomed her first child, son Malcolm, with John Mulaney in 2021, nearly two years before being diagnosed with cancer. She admitted in the new interview that she didn’t talk to anyone about her mental health woes at the time.

“I didn’t clock any of that and I didn’t tell anybody about that,” she said, adding, “Then it was like I fell off a cliff, and I was just falling and falling and falling and falling. It was more difficult than going through cancer.”

The “New Girl” alum told the outlet that she started experiencing postpartum anxiety a month after Malcolm was born on Nov. 24, 2021.

“My eyes pop open at 4 a.m. I’m gasping for air. I get the tightness in my chest, and it’s like that all day long,” she described. “It felt like the end of the world…. It was like when you watch a horror movie — the worst, scariest horror movie you can think of — that’s how my body felt.”

Munn said her pain was “physical” and she would have to hold onto Mulaney’s arm to get from room to room as if she “sprained [her] knee.”

“I was operating normally, but I was feeling very depressed,” Munn recalled of her emotions after becoming a mom. “It kicked into high gear when I hadn’t lost the baby weight, and nothing was fitting.”

Munn said she began comparing herself to other new moms who seemingly had no problem bouncing back to their pre-pregnancy weight.

“I would see people on social media, people I knew had babies around the same time. I reached out to some of them,” she said. “And I’m like, ‘How are you in these Valentino shorts and this crop top just running around LA and having the energy to take all these beautiful pictures?’”

The “Magic Mike” star said that she “didn’t have the ability” to “fake” being happy at that time.

“I didn’t have the energy to fake anything they were faking,” she said.

Munn had discussed going on medication with the “Saturday Night Live” star as well as her therapist, but she remembered being in no place to help herself.

“I truly would have taken [medication], but by the time I was talking about it, I was so far gone that even if you put a pill in my hand, I wouldn’t have taken it,” she said. “When the depression or the anxiety takes over you so much, it’s almost like you won’t take the things that will help you.”

Munn believes that some of her anxiety may have stemmed from her inability to breastfeed.

“And I could not make any breast milk. I think [that] kicked off the anxiety,” she told the outlet. “I saw—I’m telling you — three lactation coaches. I did the vitamins, the water, the heating…. It would take me all day long to fill up just one bottle.”

Munn revealed in March 2024 that she was diagnosed with breast cancer and subsequently underwent a double mastectomy, reconstructive surgery, an oophorectomy and a partial hysterectomy, in which her fallopian tubes, uterus and ovaries were removed.

Since she had already done three egg retrievals over the years, Munn and Mulaney, 42, were able to welcome their second child, daughter Méi, via surrogate.

She was born Sept. 14, 2024. 

“It was devastating for me not to be able to carry [Méi]. I loved carrying my son,” she told the outlet, noting, however, that her postpartum anxiety was “brutal.”