Olivia Munn admitted she was “devastated” by the results of her breast reconstruction surgery.
On the June 4 episode of the health and wellness podcast, SheMD with Dr. Thaïs Aliabadi and Mary Alice Haney, the 43-year-old actress shared her experience of undergoing a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction following her breast cancer diagnosis.
Munn revealed she felt uneasy about the reconstruction from the start, as her doctor informed her that due to the significant loss of breast tissue from the mastectomy, she would need “a larger implant just to fill the skin.”
“I didn’t want to have big breasts. I didn’t want them to look like a boob job. [The surgeon] was just very clear, [and told me,] ‘It’s going to look like that,'” she recalled. “All I care about is that I’m alive and I’m here for my baby. But putting that to the side, I’m like, one day people will forget or not know that I had cancer, but they’ll look at me and go, ‘Oh, what a bad boob job.'”
Despite her doctor’s assessment that the surgery results were “fantastic,” Munn said she cried the first time she saw her breasts. She had hoped for a “small and chic” look with her implants, but the outcome did not meet her expectations.
“I was by myself in my bathroom, and I looked at them and I cried in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever cried in my life,” she said. “I was devastated. I didn’t recognize myself. I didn’t know how I would ever dress myself again. I thought, ‘Oh, there are so many styles, so many things that I’ll never be able to wear.’ It just looked like someone took off my breasts and then took some tape and paper and stuff and Tupperware, and they’re like, ‘Here.'”
Although she felt “much better” about the results over time, Munn admitted on the show that she’s still self-conscious about how her breasts look. She explained that this is “a big reason” why she grew her hair out.
“I wanted to be able to hide the scars,” the star said. “I want to be able to hide the sides of the implant and feel comfortable like that.”
“Maybe one day I’ll get more comfortable with it,” she added. “I don’t look the same, but that’s okay. I’m here.”
Munn first revealed her breast cancer diagnosis in March 2024.
The news was a shock to the actress, as her annual mammogram three months earlier had come back clear, and she had recently tested negative for the BRCA cancer gene. “I was walking around thinking that I had no breast cancer,” she told PEOPLE. “I did all the tests that I knew about.”
Within 30 days, Munn underwent a lymph node dissection, a nipple delay procedure (which spares the nipples), and a double mastectomy, followed by reconstructive surgery last fall.
Munn’s lifesaving diagnosis came from her ob-gyn’s decision to calculate her lifetime breast cancer risk during a routine Pap smear using a free online tool called the Tyrer-Cuzick risk assessment calculator. The results indicated she was at high risk for breast cancer, prompting her doctor to order an MRI.
Today, Munn is determined to raise awareness for other women at risk, crediting her ob-gyn’s decision to calculate her lifetime cancer risk with saving her life. “If it wasn’t for Dr. Aliabadi, I’d still be going through life not knowing that I had breast cancer,” she told PEOPLE.
