[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Your Friends & Neighbors.]

Summary

In the Apple TV+ series ‘Your Friends & Neighbors,’ a hedge fund manager turns to crime post-job loss, delving into the complexities of maintaining a double life.

Olivia Munn’s character Sam is facing divorce while having a secret affair, struggling to preserve her social standing.

Realistic sex scenes were crucial in portraying Sam’s desperation for Coop and required collaboration and trust.

From creator Jonathan Tropper (Banshee, Warrior), the nine-episode Apple TV+ series Your Friends & Neighbors follows Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm) and his fall from grace as a hedge fund manager still struggling to get over his recent divorce from Mel (Amanda Peet). After being fired and unable to find a way to meet the financial demands of his life, Coop unexpectedly turns to a life of crime, stealing from the homes of his affluent neighbors and uncovering more than just their valuables and their taste in art. At the same time, his own affair with Sam (Olivia Munn) results in Coop getting caught in a murder accusation that he has to disentangle himself from before figuring out what comes next. Samantha Levitt is different from her privileged neighbors in Westmont Village because she’s the only one who didn’t come from money but married into it. As she and her husband go through an increasingly bitter divorce, Sam’s secret relationship with Coop becomes increasingly complicated, especially when he’s the one accused of murdering her husband. During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Munn discussed what she found most interesting about her Your Friends & Neighbors character, how Sam comes from a different place than everyone else in this world, collaborating to ensure that the sex scenes were as realistic as possible, and why laughter is such an important part of her own life.

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Olivia Munn’s ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ Character Just Wants to Pull Herself Out of a Self-Inflicted Spiral

“She’s got to figure out how to put the genie back in the bottle.”

Collider: When this came your way, what was the draw of this world for you? Was it something specific about the character that you were particularly interested in? OLIVIA MUNN: I was fascinated by the focus on human nature and what happens when someone is stripped of everything they value, and the idea that blind ambition can just upend the constructs of privilege and wealth. Specifically with my character, I love that we meet her at a moment in her life where everything is crumbling, and she’s in a secret relationship, and she’s trying to keep her head above water. We see that she’s not able to maintain the façade anymore, and things are starting to crack. At this point, she’s really losing the battle. We’re watching her slowly try to figure out how to claw her way back up to where she feels like she deserves to be, which is at the top of the social hierarchy alongside these people in this wealthy enclave with a ton of money in the bank. She’s at risk of losing all of that because she’s going through this horrible divorce where her ex-husband doesn’t want to give her a dime. In life and not just in character, I’m really interested in people who are spiraling and self-inflicted. For her, going through a divorce and her husband cheating on her, that’s not self-inflicted. But her choice to marry someone for money begins a trajectory for her life. It’s expected that that’s what would happen to her. It’s interesting to play this character and to think about someone who laid the groundwork for her own demise. Now, she’s got to figure out how to put the genie back in the bottle.

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I have to say that I found myself rooting for your character above all the other characters. Did you always see that on the page, or is that something you wanted to infuse into her, whenever and wherever possible? MUNN: That’s so nice to hear. I wasn’t thinking about that. She doesn’t come from the world that everybody else does. Everyone else was born into wealth, and they’re set up to take it all the way to the top. I understood what it was like to feel like you’re on the precipice of losing everything. I’ve been there. I’ve felt that. There’s a desperation, a sadness, and a panic that’s lurking beneath the surface, all the time. By playing this character, I was like, “Oh, God, I know this feeling.” I kept getting episodes, so I was finding out as it was going along, but I understood the feeling of swimming in the middle of the ocean, for days and days and days with no life jacket. You’re just exhausted, literally on your last breath, and doing everything you can to get out of your situation.
Olivia Munn, Jon Hamm and ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ Creator Jonathan Tropper Collaborated to Make the Sex Scenes as Realistic as Possible

“The dynamic with her and Coop is a sex-based relationship, but she has feelings for him.”

Image via Apple TV+

Your character is someone that we largely get to know through intimate moments with Coop. When you’re going to be doing so many scenes like that, is trust a priority, or do you also feel that it’s important to have more of a say in those moments? MUNN: In those kinds of scenes, it’s always, for the most part, a collaboration. I’ve only had one situation, on a film I did, where it was not a good situation. This project was so wonderful. Jonathan Tropper, Jon Hamm and I spoke about what we wanted this to be and what we wanted it to look like. My character, Sam, is a very sexual person. This dynamic with her and Coop is a sex-based relationship, but she has feelings for him and she’s desperately wanting him to reciprocate that. She is trying to connect with him through sex and hoping that will somehow click in a connection with him that’s deeper than just the physical. And so, it was really important to all of us that the sex scenes were very realistic. It was very important to me because I want the audience to understand that she’s very free and sexual and she’s trying to do her best moves in bed with them. She’s trying everything to land this guy. A lot of times, people think of an intimacy coordinator like a bodyguard, who’s just there to tell people, “Don’t touch this person and don’t do this.” It’s not like that. An intimacy coordinator is like a stunt coordinator. Stunt coordinators are there to help you coordinate fight scenes, and an intimacy coordinator is there to help coordinate the intimate scenes. We had an intimacy coordinator who was an ex-dancer, and she was wonderful because we really talked about what we wanted it to look like. On the day, she would be watching the monitor, and then come in and say, “Okay, in order for it to look more realistic, you need to put your leg here or shift your body here or sit up more.” It was really wonderful because we all wanted the same thing. We just wanted it to be realistic. We wanted people to really believe and get to know these characters, even if it’s through their sexual relationship.

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Olivia Munn Just Wants to Be Happy Every Day

“I find humor in the craziest, most chaotic moments in our life.”

Image via Apple TV+

Reading your bio for the show, I was struck by the fact that it says, “Munn lives with her husband, comedian John Mulaney, and their two children. The four of them laugh all day long.” Is laughter something that you found to be particularly important? Does that guide you at all with the roles you want to do these days? MUNN: We both just like each other so much and we are laughing, all the time. We have a three-year-old who does the most insane things. He threw something the other day that hit a vase and it broke, and I thought it was so funny. John looks at me like, “Do not laugh. If you laugh, you condone it.” When he gives me that look, I have to turn away. I find humor in the craziest, most chaotic moments in our life. Especially in this world and especially in human nature, whenever things are really tough, and you’ve lost control and lost the thread, you have to find a way to get some levity out of it. If not, you just collapse. Over the last almost two years now, with my diagnosis, that has become a huge central part of our life – to laugh and to not take things seriously. Being happy every day is very important. Picking roles that I’m interested in and are really exciting to me is really important. And working with people who are great and kind and awesome, like Jonathan Tropper, Jon Hamm, and Amanda Peet, is integral to me. I want to be happy every day, making the choices that I make.

Your Friends & Neighbors is available to stream on Apple TV+. Check out the trailer: