John Mulaney kicked off the brand new season of his Netflix talk show with a story about wife Olivia Munn’s “cancer brain.”
“Yes, I even have two children now. One was controversial, one you all appear to be cool with,” Mulaney, 42, joked through the premiere of Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney on Wednesday, March 12. “So, thanks a lot for that. I did need to say something: Over the past few months, many individuals have reached out in a really nice way about my wife Olivia who’s been battling breast cancer. I actually appreciate all the good messages that obviously she has received and that even I even have received.”
The comedian continued: “But it surely’s been an actual thing to be with someone you like a lot going through this. Prior to now couple years, Olivia has had five surgeries, months and months of cancer treatment, and the fight that she’s put up has made her so inspiring. And the effect of cancer treatment on her brain has made her, at times, so dumb.”
As Mulaney explained, “There’s a thing called cancer brain: not brain cancer. Cancer brain. It’s a sweet, wonderful dumbness that happens in any case that difficult treatment. I’ll provide you with an example. We went to a fertility doctor, we were going to make embryos. This was after Olivia had a double mastectomy, but before her hysterectomy and ovariectomy. We were going to make embryos for what eventually became our daughter this fall.”
He recalled that he and Munn, 44, “were standing within the doctor’s office and this conversation happened word for word. Doctor: ‘The good news is nine eggs survived the thaw.’ Olivia: ‘So now, we uh, mix it together with his, uh, cum?’”
On the time, Mulaney corrected Munn, saying, “Baby, baby. It’s semen,” while the doctor stated: “Guys, it’s sperm.”
Munn revealed in March 2024 that she had been diagnosed with cancer one 12 months earlier.
“I took out my uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries,” she told Vogue in May 2024. “Doing a full hysterectomy was an enormous decision to make, but it surely was the perfect decision for me because I needed to be present for my family.”
Munn and Mulaney, who tied the knot in 2024, are parents to son Malcolm, 3, and daughter Méi, 9 months. (They welcomed Méi via surrogate amid Munn’s breast cancer battle.)
“There’s this lifetime risk assessment test that is basically the one reason her cancer was discovered,” Mulaney said on the March 9 broadcast of CBS Sunday Morning. “Seeing so many ladies publicly and privately come to her that [say] they found how high their risk was from that, it’s astonishing.”