If you’ve seen the new gripping Apple TV show Your Friends & Neighbors, then you know that Olivia Munn steals the screen as recent divorcée Sam. But what you might not know from watching the show is that she was ready to step back from acting before the script was sent to her inbox.

In a new interview with People, Munn explained that acting took a backseat in her life following the birth of her son Malcolm in 2021, whom she shares with husband John Mulaney, and her breast cancer diagnosis in 2023.

“I love acting, but John loves performing more,” Munn told the outlet. “Nothing I had worked on in the past five or six years felt like it was worth me taking time away from my family.”

“I started thinking for the first time that maybe I need to be behind the camera, not that that’s not also hard work, but putting myself in front of the camera felt a lot more vulnerable,” she explained. “I wanted to protect myself.”

But as she started to make peace with leaving her acting career behind, the script for Your Friends & Neighbors, in which her character has a relationship with Jon Hamm’s character, came along.

“It was the thing I needed to energize me,” she said of the show, which is already streaming. “When I told John I was taking it, he was just so happy. I had one more surgery to do, and by that point, we knew that [daughter] Méi was on her way. I just felt like I was ready to let go of the fears and worries that I had.”

Mulaney, for his part, gushed about Munn’s acting return.

“For the past three years, Liv was just giving everything she had to her health and to being the brightest and silliest mom and partner,” he said of his wife. “But I have to admit — and I’ve never said this to her — I didn’t think she was done acting by any means.”

So when Munn showed her excitement for her role, Mulaney was her biggest cheerleader.

“She was sitting on the bed and just lit up when she told me about this role,” he remembered. “Then Malcolm and I and then Méi Méi got the chance to see our Olivia just expand and give her whole mind and heart to us and to doing this show: to see her come back from such a long break, to watch her prepare for this role while still in the middle of exhausting cancer treatment, and then like everyone else to watch week after week as she crafts this totally original, really funny, really staggering character in Sam … I’m just blown away.” How adorable is that?

And while Mulaney will always be swooning over Munn, fans of the show can also attest that she’s totally in her element. We’re so happy for her!

Before you go, click here to see celebrities who have returned to acting or singing after retiring.