The Predator comes out this week, but aside from promoting her new film, Olivia Munn is also having to bolster her reasoning behind blowing the whistle on Steven Wilder Striegel, a registered sex offender with whom she shared a short scene.
In an appearance on Ellen, Munn explained once again the horror of Striegel’s abuse. “He was a 38-year-old man at the time, it happened about 10 years ago, he was 38 years old, and went after a 14-year-old female relative,” she said. “When I found that out I did call Fox, and I said, ‘We have to delete the scene.’”
It took 20th Century Fox a couple days to respond to her request, but eventually the company did delete the scene. Munn also took it into her hands to tell her co-stars before the details of Striegel’s abuse broke in various news outlets. Unfortunately, she didn’t get the kind of support she had been looking for.
“When I did call my costars I got chastised the next day,” Munn explained. Striegel was hired by his friend, director Shane Black, who previously brought the registered predator and offender on for Iron Man 3, Swing State, The Nice Guys, and other movies. Black claims he did not know the details of the case until recently.
“People all over the world see what we do, and just that tiny drop of fame can be used to hurt an impressionable person, and that's just not okay,” Munn told DeGeneres, while discussing why it was so important for the scene to be cut and for the cast to speak out. “The reality is that the people who collude to keep people like this in positions of power, that’s the real problem. The people who keep turning blind eyes."
With the exception of Sterling Brown, the leading actress says she’s felt little support from her colleagues. “I think people expected me to be quiet because it was my movie, but the truth is I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t care if this movie gave me all the money in the world and all the power, if it cost one person's life, they can take it, I don’t want this career.”
